Coping With Colic
Ideas to help baby and you get a good night's sleep
"I can't take it anymore!" cries a distraught parent. "The baby screams all the time. No one in the house gets any sleep. I'm at the end of my rope!" Many parents of colicky babies express these emotions. Along with their exhaustion and frustration comes a healthy dose of guilt, a nagging feeling that they are the cause of their babies' discomfort.
There is a lot that doctors don't know, but they do emphasize that guilt is useless and only adds to parents' heavy emotional load. It's important that parents realize they aren't responsible. They didn't cause colic. There is a higher incidence of colic in babies whose parents are uptight, tense, nervous or who have had a difficult pregnancy, but no studies have been done to show whether the tense parents make the baby colicky or the baby's colic makes the parents tense.
The good news is that colic usually goes away when the baby reaches 90 days. It may be because as children mature, they are better able to tolerate their feedings. Or that their nervous systems mature and they are better able to soothe themselves. We don';t know.
Is there anything parents can do in the meantime to dampen the screaming just a little? Sometimes dietary adjustments can relieve a baby's discomfort, but constant formula changes are not the way to determine if a baby's colic is diet-related. Only a small percentage of kids are lactose intolerant, and about 20 percent of people who are allergic to milk are also allergic to soy. Therefore, if there is no improvement after switching from milk-based to soy-based formula to an elemental formula, then no amount of formula changes will help colic. Be sure to check with the pediatrician before switching formulas.
There are also a few non-dietary remedies. The National Institutes of Health came up with a device that clips onto the bottom of the bed to vibrate it and produce a motor sound. It usually works for about 30% of parents.
Swaddling and rocking a colicky baby work for many, and holding the baby over the forearm, dangling face down, helps gas pass more easily. Warm baths and doses of simethicone, a gas relieving substance that should only be given under a doctor's supervision, also helps ease pains. One book on children's health recommends earplugs for the parents if all else fails.
