Sentence: Faith was colicky; she kept me up all night and nursed with such...

[Christine Huang]

"Faith was colicky;she kept me up all night and nursed with such a vengeance my belly cramped at each feeding" This is a paragraph in a novel.My questions are what"colicky","vengeance"and"nursed with" mean.

[HamburgEnglish]

Hi Christine

Colicky in the text means to be extremly quicky irritated and crying. Nursed is the name given to the action of a mother breast feeding her baby. Finally with a vengence means with a very strong want or will.

Torsten, can you remove the rubbish !!

[Christine Huang]

Thank you,I understand a lot.
And,I also have a trivial question of grammar.
Can the sentence"she kept me up all night and nursed with......" be equal to "she kept me up all night and was nursed with......"?
I think "was" is omitted in this sentence.
But,I am not for sure.
Can you explain more?
:)

[HamburgEnglish]

Hi Christine, You need to give me some more of the sentence to get context.

Generally to use the verb directly means "SHE nursed with" whereas "was nursed with implies "by" another person"

e.g.

Active sentence: "I played football"
Passive Sentence: "Football was played by ?"

But as said, my explanation depends really on the rest of the sentence!

[Christine Huang]

This is the whole paragraph.
"I've loved Faith since she was born,but not the way you'd think.She was a relief. After first wanting to miscarry and then months on Prozac,I'd been certain she'd appear with three eyes or a harelip. But the easy,normal birth gave way to the reality of a baby I could not make happy,as if my punishment for thinking the worst of her were to be disconnected before we ever had a chance to bond.Faith was colicky;she kept me up all night and nursed with such a vengeance my belly cramped at each feeding.Sleep-deprived and unsettled,I would lay her on the bed at times,stare at her wise,round face and think,What on earth do I do with you?"

Thank you for your explanation with patience. :)