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.

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