Helpful Tips when Dealing with Colicky Babies
Defeat is all over your face and in your body at 12:00 midnight. For the 7th night in a row, your child has been crying since 5 pm that afternoon. If you have had a baby who suffered with colic, then you are all too familiar with this scene. A baby crying for that long for days on end can leave any experienced parent feeling hopeless.
Colic is defined as inconsolable crying for at least 3 hours or more a day for 3 days straight and 3 weeks starting at a rather consistent time usually in the afternoon. Colic in babies usually starts at the age of 2 weeks. It is often associated with digestive problems and a distended painful stomach. The more the baby cries, the more air fills the stomach causing more pain. Then at 12-1 at night out of exhaustion, baby falls asleep to repeat the process all over again. So why is my baby in so much distress.
A Solution
When parents bring their colicky baby in for help, I often find two culprits that are the cause. What the baby is ingesting for food and the nervous system. Cow’s whey protein or cow’s milk is the usual culprit for both formula fed and breast fed babies. Some formulas have many ingredients that are not suitable for consumption. High fructose corn syrup and cow protein are a couple of them. Cow milk protein is a much larger protein the human milk protein which makes it harder to digest. Also, if mother is breastfeeding, I find that even drinking cow’s milk can affect the digestion and contribute colic.
However, often I find the nerves to be a problem affecting the digestive system and other areas of the body as well. When a nerve is compromised in some way, it will not work properly. The purpose of the nerves is that of communication to various parts of the body to allow those parts to work effectively. Many of you have experienced a form of this when you hit your elbow then feel a jolt down your forearm and your hand goes numb. Your hand is hard to control it is not working properly. Now think of the stomach being “numb” or sluggish and not working the way it was programed and designed to work. There would definitely be some issues. So often as a chiropractor I find that nerves have been compromised in the baby’s spine. This may have occurred during the birth process or while constrained womb. So if you would like to wait and see what happens you may. However, know that there are options to getting colic resolved shortly after it occurs or before it becomes a problem.
This is what one of my dear patients had to say. See if you can relate.
Here are some tips that may help sooth your baby and keep the non-stop crying under control:
- Look what is in baby’s formula. If it is cow protein base, you may consider changing formulas or switch to goats milk. The protein in relatively the same size as human protein.
- If you are breastfeeding, try not consuming dairy for a week and see what happens.
- Burp your baby well. Excessive gas can be painful
- Try safe, gentle chiropractic care for your baby. Often it helps with colic and other conditions that your baby has as well.