There is no single remedy for treating colic. Treating colic basically involves soothing your baby, reducing stress and identifying and eliminating any thing that could be causing the colic.

You should also look not only at decreasing your babies stress levels but yours as well. Babies are very sensitive and if you are stressed they are quite capable of sensing this and becoming agitated themselves.

Environmental

Some simple techniques people use include:

• Gently holding and rocking your baby – for example you can gently dance with your baby to soft soothing music.
• Carrying your baby with you as you do your tasks around the house e.g. in a sling or in a backpack
• Singing to your baby.
• Engaging your baby – Keep them engaged with things that move, can be moved, make sounds or that they can use to make sounds – basically anything to catch and maintain their attention continually.
• Provide them with a dummy to suck on – they find these comforting.
• Keep them upright in a position where they can see what is going on around them.
• Take your baby outside where there are lots of stimuli to catch their attention.
• Babies often find a slightly warm bath to be soothing.

The “5 S’s” Technique

Diet and Feeding

Lactose Intolerance

Based on the theory that colic is due to intolerance to lactose, if you feed your baby with formula milk, you could switch to another brand containing less lactose.

Alternatively, you can add lactase to your milk formula (or expressed milk, if you breast feed your baby). Lactase is an enzyme that breaks down lactose in the body to help digest it. Newborn babies may lack lactase and only produce enough of it, as they get older, which may be why colic stops after about 3 months.

Allergic Reactions

Some babies appear to react or be allergic to certain foods including wheat proteins, eggs, animal milk or nuts. You can get milk substitute formula feeds that are free from animal proteins or if you breast-feed you can experiment with eliminating dairy products such as milk and cheese from your diet.

If you can, try to avoid formula milks derived from Soya milk as though they may help stop the colic, they may also produce steroid like effects, which could possibly affect your baby’s reproductive systems.

Medicinal Products

Alternative Therapies

Massage Techniques

Aromatherapy

Many illnesses produce colic like crying but are symptoms of more serious conditions. These include:

• - Intestinal disorders
• - Mouth infections
• - Ear infections
• - Kidney conditions
• - Eye injuries
• - Skin rashes or infections
• - Swelling leading to pressure on the brain
• - Things that lead to breathing problems
• - Infections and many other causes of pain

– in fact any illness at all that causes constant irritation or pain will generally initiate crying for as long as it continues.

So How Do You Identify Colic

Many factors could lead to your baby crying for an unusually long time. They may not be symptoms of colic at all but could be due to either some easily solved stress factor or a more serious illness:

Transient Causes Of Crying

Factors you should eliminate include:

• - Overheating – your baby could be too hot or too cold when you feel comfortable.
• - Itching – examine your child’s skin and clothing to see if they are too rough, have poking or rasping labels, buttons or scratchy surfaces.
• - Hunger or thirst
• - Wind from drinking too quickly of from a wrongly sized teat (if breast fed)
• - Lack of human contact – Some babies require far more contact and reassurance than others.
• - Pain or discomfort – Check your babies position, is there possible pain, cramp, a painful skin rash etc.

Crying Due to Illness

On the other hand, while colic may be worrying, it is far worse to assume your child has colic when your child is actually distressed because of a more serious condition.

If your child exhibits one of these symptoms of pain or illness in addition to continuous crying you should definitely seek medical help.

1. - Poor or reduction in weight gain or actual loss of weight
2. - Raised or lowered temperature.
3. - Vomiting – especially if it is has an unusual colour is bloody or continues over several days.
4. - Any abnormal changes to your babies stool patterns including being constipated, diarrhoea or stools containing blood or mucous.
5. - Listlessness or lethargy, weakness, disinterest, sleeping for unusually long periods, feeling to weak to suckle properly.
6. - Change in crying pattern to moans or weak crying
7. - Sharp and high pitched crying – you should eliminate environmental factors, clothing or a rash as the cause before assuming sickness.
8. - Disturbed eating patterns or behaviour before, during or after meals.
9. - Abnormal irritability; with all day almost unceasing crying for days.
10. - Any bulging of the soft spot on your baby head.

I  breast fed my son from  birth but as he  kept projectile vomiting and constantly displayed colic like symptoms as well as diarrhoea, I stopped and started feeding him  cow and gate milk.

This however didnt improve his symptoms but after several trips to the medical center he was diagnosed as being lactose intolerant. After this he was placed on a prescription formula (enfamil lactofree) which worked.

He has now used that for over 4 months (he is s now 5 months)

I visited a dietitian  who has advised got me to start him on yogurts  – fortunately he has been fine so I want to change him onto normal formula but i dont know which one to use.

I wonder if any of you have any advice or know of a good formula that he would probably be okay with – a formular that is easy going on the stomach and easy to digest. As I live in the UK it would need to be something I could get here.

Thanks

We have an 8 week old baby who is very unsettled. shes breastfed and feeding constantly. we cant seem to settle her. she is giving symptoms of colic, arched back, screaming, not sleeping, and i can hear bubbles when feeding her. tried infacol and gripe water so far with no improvement. the gp has seen her, but didnt know what was wrong. has anyone else had this problem? she does not even go 2 hours through the night and we are exhausted. we have 2 other children

I have been feeding my baby with this special formula milk as she was found to be lactose intolerant a month after she was born. Since I put her on the stage 2 milk (at months age) she has not responded well to feeding. Rather she displays colic like symptom including thrashing around, tummy ache and more recently a very nasty rash.

Are there any mums using this milk whose babies have experienced similar problems?
I’ve also been told that Soya milk is not recommended for babies because it contains lots of oestrogen –
Is this true?

Our 6 days old boy is showing strong symptoms of Colic over the past 24 hours. He goes through very screamy and uncomfy patches and you can see the pain come and go. However, he gets quite sick for a while after feeds and his sick looks like curdled milk. Lumpy milk and clear liquid. Does anyone what this may be.

I am breastfeeding my newborn baby girl who is generally healthy in every way but suffers from repeated stomach cramps.

At first we thought it was colic but she is not constantly screaming or displaying other symptoms normally found if you have colic. When she is asleep and sometimes while awake she suffers from painful spasms that make her to draw her knees up to her chest and breath in short gasps to overcome the pain.

We’ve tried getting rid of gas in her stomach without success or any palliative no effect. Any advice? Please don’t tell me just to visit my midwife or doctor!

Since I am breastfeeding I wonder if its due to something I’m eating or drinking?
Does anyone have a clue as to the cause or solution?

Hi, my LO is 10 weeks old and from the beginning I have expressed a bottle a day that DH feeds to him at tea time so that I can prepare dinner.

I have been attempting to turn this feed into a formula feed to give me a break from pumping. I tried Aptamil for 1 week but it makes my LO uncomfortable with trapped wind/gas and mild colic symptoms.

I would like to try Cow & Gate Comfort 1 but it states on the front of the packaging that it is for use "when baby is not breastfed" as opposed to aptamil which says "when baby is not breastfed and for combined feeding"

Has anyone out there used Comfort 1 to supplement breastfed babies?

Thanks

Sally

My baby is 5 months old and as a brand new baby had a week of colic symptoms and then nothing since…she has however had REALLY bad wind yesterday night and this evening also…like colic…why has it re-surfaced? There was only that one week as a 2 week old that she had bad colic-like wind and has been fine since. I know it is that as she has been yelling all evening (asleep now) and drawing her knees up and passing wind…all I could do was carry her round on her front which seemd to help her…I did all the other tips for moving wind…but WHY??? I hope it doesnt hang around…oh and she has been on the same formula since birth,…I could not breast feed:(….no milk at all…as I was very sick….there have been no changes in her diet and she poops regularly too. Every day!

Our 5 week old has symptoms of a milk intolerance (screaming all day, trouble sleeping, eczema, a facial skin rash, mucusy poos… the list goes on) and so our doctor prescribed nutramigen on friday to see if it helps. Over the weekend he seemed a bit more settled and he’s definately sleeping better (he used to be awake screaming most of the day but is sleeping most of the time between feeds now). However, hes still very uncomfortable after feeds (screaming in pain sometimes) and he stills seems to have belly ache (trapped wind maybe – like colic symptoms) – also his rash is still present. He also suffers from reflux but it says on the tin that it should help with reflux, colic, etc. Im worried that it isn’t working but I know a lot of people have different opinions as to how long it takes to see any effects from a change of formula. What are your experiences?

My son is 13 weeks and is showing definate signs, the health visitor is convinced that is the issue (combined with his 3 month growth spurt!)

My usually happy, content baby is all out of sorts. I’m inclined to agree with her, and am sick of people telling me its "too early to be his teeth and must be colic"

Fussiness, obvious discomfort, excessive drooling, restlessness, sleepless nights and biting down hard on anything and everyting are not normal behaviours for a usually happy content child who exhibits some of the above at a normal level when happy!
No offence hard candy and Elyse’s mummy but I know my son and this is absolutely not ‘normal’ baby behaviour, he is quite clearly in pain.

Im at the end of my tether!
My 6 week old baby is currently on a hypo-allergenic formula (nutramigen) to see if a milk allergy may be causing his reflux. He has been on it for 6 days and although he seemed a bit more settled for the first couple of days he now seems to be suffering from the reflux more than ever (we stop to wind him half way through his feed and he screams so much from the pain that he then refuses to take the rest – its a real struggle and its breaking my heart to see him in so much pain). We are going to start adding infant gaviscon to his milk from this evening on our doctors advice but last time we tried gaviscon with his milk it gave him terrible painful constipation, so Im dreading making him suffer more. I just wondered what your experiences are of reflux and what you have found to be the best way of easing the pain (e.g. if a specific milk is good, etc – we are in the UK so please only suggest formulas we can get here!). We keep him upright when feeding, burp him regularly, prop his moses basket up at an angle…

He also seems to suffer from terrible belly ache that wakes him from his sleep, I think it may be colic.

I have just returned from a trip to my doctors with my 7 month old baby girl.

We took her because she seemed very restless at night. She is also in the early stages of teething.
The doc checked her ears and they were fine and checked her gums and confirmed it was early stages of teething.

He also said he thinks she is a bit colicky. She has several dirty nappies a day which are quite solid, rabbit dropping like. Since she has shown signs of teething she has gone off her formula a little. This left her a little dehydrated which he says can also cause colic.
His advise for her teething pain was to give her calpol (infant suspension) along with infant ibuprofen together at night to take away the pain and to help her sleep.

Has anyone got any advise or been in a similar situation with colic or any of the symptoms above?
Many thanks and a happy new year to all.x

I brought my son to the care doc last night as I was worried about the crying. He told me he had colic. Told me to stop the Infacol and Colief drops as I’m only wasting my time!!!! So now we have to wait for the symptoms to disappear but any advice on how to deal in the mean time???? I’ve heard that The Doctor Brown bottles are v good for colic. Has anyone out there used them?? And how did you find them?

While we still don’t know exactly what causes colic, there are many theories and possibilities and several things have been found to contribute or increase the risk of your child developing it.

• Food Allergies or Intolerance:

Some babies find it difficult to digest lactose (a kind of sugar found in milk). It is thought by some that this is because their digestive system is undeveloped. Those who doubt this theory point out that the same percentage of premature babies and full term babies suffer from colic.

• Environment and Babies Personality

Another theory is that colic is due to distress caused to your baby by the change in environment from being in its mothers womb and the exposure to very different stimuli (or the lack of it) e.g. sounds, smells, tastes, temperatures, light, diet or even people.

• Smoking

It has been found that smoking while pregnant doubles the chances of your baby developing colic.

What Doesn’t or May Not Cause Colic?

The medical profession originally agreed that colic was caused by stomach upsets. This belief has changed because:

a)      Premature babies who lack fully developed digestive systems do not suffer from colic to a larger degree than full term babies.

b)      Trapped Wind in the stomach – Babies have been found to have more air trapped in their stomachs after a crying episode rather than before. So crying is not an attempt to dislodge it or expel it.

Sounds have no effect on reducing pain; yet are helpful in alleviating colic