AIBU to not get how Infacol get away with it?

[ICBINEG]

I mean compare this

with this

beattie my dd had classic colic, the late in the day inconsolable screaming for hours with the back arching and knee drawing up business. But on the basis that she always burped like a dream and never sickied up at all, we never considered that wind/reflux was an issue. Our HV suggested infacol and I was all set to run out and buy some till my husband got 15 mins on the internet and pointed out the NHS page showing it does nothing beyond placebo.

15 more minutes and he found the current state of play on colic (that in the majority of cases it is caused by over-stimulation - hence it builds during the day and recovers over night) and that there are a range of behavioural treatments that work beyond placebo. We also learned that our DD not napping at all during the day is not normal and leads to vast over-stimulation and that DD had several other indicators, including not playing with toys, screaming if she saw a person that wasn't me or dh, refusing to let anyone touch her hands etc.

So we changed everything around....we just said no to visits or leaving the house, we took away everything from her cot, DH and I had to avoid wearing bright colours or stripes etc, gave her her own space in a darkened room and spent hours and hours everyday trying to get her to settle and nap. Reducing the stimulation level to the point where napping happened coincided with the colic behaviour disappearing altogether, overnight.

Now of course not every baby exhibiting colic behaviour is over stimulated, and not every baby that is over stimulated could be treated successfully by the same intervention, but at least the behavioural approach HAS been demonstrated more effective than placebo.....and if I had followed the HV's advice I would have been trying infacol for 'a few weeks' (the period my HV suggested it might take to work - yeah - that would be because it doesn't actually work..and you have to wait for a random fluctuation to occur before declaring victory) before looking onwards for a real solution. If we had suffered another 3 weeks of that before finding out we had been conned we would have been seriously distressed.

(I was slightly playing devil's advocate because I don't think my dd4 does have wind and I don't give her infacol as it seems clear to me now she has reflux as my other children did.)

I find your post interesting though ICBINEG because I had reached the conclusion that for my dd too it's over tiredness that causes her issues. Like yours, she doesn't sleep during the day and now, at 5 months, it doesn't happen every evening. Unfortunately because I have 5 other children and a busy life, it isn't possible to remove all stimulation from her life.

But at the same time, I'm not sure why you're so angry about infacol use - but if you are, this thread would have been better used as an advice thread to parents with colic-sufferers, sharing your experience.

Yes I can see that it is a very different thing dealing with colic in a pfb than a sixth child (my god I can not even imagine it!).

I think it makes me angry because while I have no problem providing hope when hope is the best known remedy, I have a big problem in making a profit selling something that doesn't work when there are things that do. IT just seems immoral....

But yes I should probably get over it one day soon...:)

Each baby is different. Infacol worked on my daughter a treat for her colic! I used to dip her dummy or bottle teat (water/juice) into some gripe water too.

charlie how do you know it worked?

Well when she didnt have infacol she would scream for hours, scrunching herself up into a ball.
Give her a dose of infacol and she was asleep within half hour or laughing her head off

Infacol also worked a treat for DS1, was so glad when I found something that worked. He used to be doubled over in pain, poor little thing

I agree that they are being disingenuous in selling a product which probably works well for a very specific condition for a much wider range of conditions for which it doesn't work any better than Smarties. Some babies have trapped wind and can genuinely be helped by Infacol but they'll make more money by flogging it to everybody with a crying baby.

I gave it to DD who went through a very grumpy trapped wind phase and it seemed to help. An acquaintance of mine saw me giving her drops and said "Oh that's rubbish, it didn't help my DS's colic at all" so I asked "Did your DS have trapped wind then?" "No " she said. She'd clearly been missold an entirely inappropriate product (and totally failed to inform herself about the nature of the products she was squirting down her baby's throat ).

OTOH it's very safe and relatively cheap, so it's not the worst case of misselling I've seen and it's low down on my list of stuff to get cross about.

dilys heh...don't worry I am EVEN more angry about lots of other things....still it more worthwhile being angry about then homeopathy as it does actually have an active ingredient and hence presumably the risk of side effects is higher...

charlie and you evidence that the infacol was responsible for the change is?

It's very slightly more risky than sugar pills I gues, but as I understand it the effects are physical/inorganic rather than the sorts of organic chemistry that will interact with your body chemistry - hence should be intrinsically safe. Caveat - I am not a biochemist (as you can tell from the flaky way I'm explaining it), anyone who is can feel free to overrule me.

icbineg if you had a headache, were to take a paracetomol and go to sleep then wake up with no headache, would you say the paracetomol worked? or would you say the sleep helped?

Bit of a stupid question imho.

When DD had infacol, she was fine. If she was without it she was clearly in pain with trapped wind. Thats enough evidence for me to say it worked a treat for her.

Like i did state though in my first post, everyone is different.

Yes Charlie, apart from the fact that it worked, what evidence do you have that it worked?

Dont even think i should put any words here
clearly, lol.

Lol icbineg so desperately doesn't want to believe any of us that think Infacol is beneficial.

My dr and HV both say that colic is a catch all description of a multitude of symptoms that cause young babies to cry inconsolably for hours, therefore if there are many causes could it equally not be the case that many things can help relieve the problem? I think it does, Inacol helps my dd and quiet time helps the op's lo. I'm sure that just as many will swear by gripe water, boiled water, tummy massage, bicycle legs etc etc. colic is awful and any parent with a colicky baby will try anything until they find something - anything that helps. But different things work for different babes - fact.

charlie My Aunt smoked a lot...she then gave up smoking and got diagnosed with cancer...at some point she got told there was no point treating and took up smoking again...after a period of apparent remission she decided to pack in the fags again and went rapidly downhill...

If anything my Aunt has more evidence that stopping smoking causes cancer than you have that infacol worked for your baby.

But it would be stupid to make such a sweeping statement based on the subjective personal evidence of one persons experience wouldn't it.....

Just because things happen after each other doesn't mean that the first thing caused the second.

boggler ha...I have no problem whatsoever believing you think that infacol treats colic....but have I no more respect for your 'view point' than the millions that also think homeopathy worked for them....or anything else that the balance of clinical evidence simply doesn't support.

Although...it must be said that all the people on here saying it worked actually seem to be talking about wind...which, as I have said a million times, is not a problem....they can say clinically proven to treat wind....just not colic.

YANBU OP.

My two have has awful reflux. And colic from overtiredness.
When my GP offered infacol I was because I had read it can be a bad move for reflux type babies especially silent reflux and I knew it was not proven to work. I got proper meds instead. Worked a treat.

Haven't read the rest of this thread.

There was one day DS cried all day. And I mean ALL day. He was a few weeks old. He slept briefly then cried again. I though I was going to have to send him back. I thought I was going to have to kill DH. That evening I gave DS infacol. He burped hugely. Then he stopped crying and went to sleep.

There were no other times it worked that well, but that day it may have saved my sanity or at least our marriage.

I find it very very difficult to burp. I think DS may have inherited this and the infacol helped.

YANBU
I share your pragmatism. If there's no evidence it works, it shouldn't be prescribed or recommended by HCPs. End of.
Don't understand why some posters are vein defensive

Agree with op my baby would scream in the evening, once we started a strict early, quiet calm bedtime it stopped.

Wind is not colic.

Smethicone may help with wind.

From NHS Choices: here

"Colic is the medical term for excessive, frequent crying in a baby who appears to be otherwise healthy and well fed. It is a poorly understood yet common condition, and affects around one in five babies.
If your baby has colic, they may appear to be in distress. However, the condition is not harmful, and your baby will continue to feed and gain weight normally. There is no evidence that colic has any long-term effects on a baby?s health.
A baby with colic may have several crying outbursts a day, a few times a week. The crying pattern usually begins within the first few weeks of life but often stops by the time the baby is four months old, and by six months at the latest."

Bloody advertising authority should take all these fucking snake oil salesmen to task for selling products on the basis that they are colic cures.

here

here here

"Don't understand why some posters are vein defensive"

This thread has made me laugh.

You might as well give your baby homeopathic remedies.

i give the rabbits infacol when they have tummy ache. it works on them.

shagmun you've misunderstood my post!
I totally agree with OP. I wonder why people are defensive of Infacol not the other way round!

bloody hell....now my husband is on the infacol....okay so he has some sort of explosive wind issue post gastroenteritis....but still....for the look of the thing...he could have found a different simeticone product :)

shag thanks for the cool calm reason...it sometimes feels like we are truly post rational as a society....