Talk to me about colic...

[Intotheforest]

Hi, my DC is eleven weeks and every evening we deal with the same crying meltdowns. My husband and I do not have any evening whatsoever. We don't get to eat a meal together or watch tv or have any downtime at all. She is a very poor daytime sleeper. It takes a lot to try to get her to sleep and her naps are usually around 40mins-1 hour. In this time she generally is being cuddled as wakes up as soon as out down. When the crying finally subsides at around 9/9:30pm she will feed to sleep then is usually great through the night, waking around every 4 hours. She sleeps in a crib next to our bed. She is a windy baby she has struggled with a tongue tie and umbilical hernia. She has had the tongue tie revised and is also seeing an osteopath. Her night feeds are productive but daytime ones less so with her pulling off the breast regularly. You can hear her taking in air and I spend a lot if time winding doing bicycle legs etc. I have used gripe water now and again to help with wind. I would love to hear your experiences of colic. Was it anything like this? What did your baby do? When did it ease? Did you have an evening routine? I'm just hoping it starts to ease soon as it's so so hard especially for DH who is helping deal with it as soon as he gets in from work. Thank you in advance.

My DS was very much the same as your LO and it nearly broke us. But at 11 weeks, you are very nearly out of the woods with colic! DS's was gone completely by the time he was 4 months old and now he's a lovely happy 7 month old.
We tried gripe water, infacol, dentinox etc and none of it really helped. He just did it less and less then never again. Hang in there OP, it will get better soon.

Oh and we would run the hairdryer to make him stop screaming crying. For some weird reason it would put him into a trance and calm him down. Also holding him against my chest in the "kangaroo carry" position helped. Good luck

Thank you for sharing. We have an electric razor which we run and that calms her down. The HV said she thinks it is colic as she only does it at this time every night. Does it go gradually or do you wake up one day and it just stops? I'm scared to get my hopes up as we approach the 3 months mark as at the minute it just doesn't seem like it going to end.

Oh it didn't just stop, that would be too easy. He stopped doing it as frequently, then when it happened he wouldn't cry for as long etc and it tapered off and stopped completely by about 16 weeks. I think 11 weeks is really fever pitch and it will start to subside very soon.

You realise colic isn't a diagnosis? It just means crying that you can't find the reason for. So in a newborn, especially your first, this really means almost all crying. We all have to learn to understand and make sense of the reasons behind the crying, and that tajes time with all babies. So all colic means is that you're not quite there with reading the meaning of the crying yet.

So some helpful (I hope) tips:

• babies are often soothed by sucking. Could you feed baby and leave her there, without trying to move her? Or a dummy is a great way to allow for independant comfort sucking.

• many babies like the protected, safe, feeling like from when in the womb. A swaddle can help with this. Or baby night simply like to be held close and cuddles

• rhythmic movement. Ideally in the place baby will stay aslerp. So dummy and bouncy chair bouncing, dummy and pushchair pushing back and forth, sling, car journey, rocking in your arms

• Calories. You'll never get a hungry baby to slerp no matter what you do. A baby with low level hunger (ie calorie intake on the low side over the whole 24/48 hours) is going to be more difficult to get to sleep than a well fed baby

• adequate winding is very important. Wind well after every feed and research different ways to wind if you don't get a burp from baby. Windy babies benefit from a feeding position where their head is higher than stomach. Dummy can help wind pain (dummies really are amazing)

• baby will want quite short awake times in the daytime. Around 45-75 minutes awake and then a nap at this age.

• the nap cycle of 45-75m awake 30-45m asleep is likely to continue into the late evening, when you go to bed. If you're beating yourself up trying to get baby "to bed" at 7pm, this may be a futile battle. The 7pm nap will just be a nap

• evening cluster feeding is usual in breastfed babies. Whereby they spend several hours in the evening just feeding and dozing on and off. Just park yourself on the sofa with a boob out and baby on your lap for the whole time.

Thanks for your reply. Yes I do realise that colic is not a diagnosis but I also recognize that it is a term for a situation a lot of parents find themselves in. I feel that I do understand what the crying is for but I don't know how to ease it. We aren't trying to get her to bed for 7, just to not be so upset for hours on end on an evening. She takes a dummy happily but will not settle to sleep easily at all. She wont be bounced in a chair, swaddled or put down for a sleep. As I said in my original post, it is very difficult to get her to nap during the day. She will fall asleep after rocking in my arms but this can take in excess of an hour at times. She also struggles with wind and I do wind her thoroughly after every feed and more. I also take her to baby massage and do these techniques with her at home also. I know people have had similar experiences so I'm just looking to see how it has been for others and when people started to see signs of improvement. Thanks again.

Hi, we had similar issues with colic/reflux, very windy baby and serious difficulties bringing up wind. Our baby also HATED to nap during the day!! Infacol, dentanox, etc were all utterly useless. We tried every winding position we could find on youtube but nothing would work. The things that helped were: driving to get him to sleep (and keep him asleep); constant breastfeeding throughout evenings; white noise; and, bouncing on an exercise/birthing ball whilst holding baby upright with their wee head on your shoulder. The latter was a kind of failsafe to soothe and I've heard a few people saying this bouncing really helped their babies. It really is exhausting but just think of the calories you burn - I lost 2 stone!! Also, baby in a sling and dancing to nice music. I promise you get your evenings back; DS is now 10mo, constantly cheery and almost reliably sleeping through. It does get better! And I seem to remember 11 weeks is around the peak of colic issues so hopefully things settle very soon for you. Good luck!

Hello. I have a 7 week old DS who also has colic. We have had few weeks of screaming from 5:30-??? We would take it in turns to try and soothe him and walk round house with him. We would wait until the 9-10 bottle then take him to his crib where he was more settled. We have been trying everything.
He was getting very very restless at around 7 and wouldn't even want to be held or cuddled so we had to place him down in his crib and low and behold it calmed him. Now when he gets to that stage I take him up out him in crib sleeping bag on and ewan the sheep going and he lies there and will always fall asleep within the hour for the night.
I think it is a matter of what works for your baby. Fingers crossed she grows out of her colic soon