Does anyone here have any experience with colicky babies?
My wife is breastfeeding our 8-week old boy. Everything is going really well, except that every day the baby often cries from 6PM till past 7PM. He seems to get a buildup of gas in his intestines, so we’ve tried giving him some Oval and Gripe water… with varying results.
We’ve been told that perhaps he’s being affected by what she eats. One nurse told us that she should stop eating red meat and drinking milk. Someone else told us that she may have too much fat in her diet (which I doubt).
I’m interested to know if anyone here has any experience with this. How long does it last and/or what did you do to releive the symptoms.
We went through a couple of weeks of it and it was pure hell. I did find infant massage seemed to help. There is a specific abdominal massage technique that is intended to help expel the excess gas (i.e. increase the baby farts).
We also found that increased stimulation (i.e. other kids running around and screaming) could make it worse.
I think only time will totally make it go away. Just be grateful it’s happening at a reasonable hour and not 2AM.
– WADuck, who is glad this thread wasn’t about horse colic. Now that’s nasty.
We had similar problems and found Mylecon drops to be a big help. Mylecon drops are the major brand name but go to any pharmacy and ask for the generic Simethicone drops. They are safe for infants and the generic will save you major $$$. They REALLY help.
Both our babies went through similar stages. Our daughter liked to cry from about 7-8 or 8:30 and our son, unfortunately liked to do his in the middle of the night. I don’t think you can really call it colic unless it goes on for hours.
I second the recommendation of Mylicon drops. They seemed to help our kids. I also believe it is just a stage–babies that age are starting to be more aware of their surroundings and just need to let off some steam. After about 3 months or so it just tapered off and went away.
(I wouldn’t take the diet stuff too seriously. My daughter was formula fed and my son was partly breastfed and they both went through pretty much the same process.)
Lilly went through about a week or this same behavior - 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm, terrible screams, drawing her legs up to her abdomen, etc. The last time I looked into it, there was a feeling that the child’s digestive system is still developing and has some trouble with the milk/formula.
Mylecon helped, as did turning her over my knee and turning from side to side and rubbing her back. Careful not to get too vigorous, or you’ll have baby vomit all over your pants and the carpet - and nothing stinks like soured formula that a baby throws up. She also liked to be put on the washing machine as it ran - the vibrations seemed to soothe her.
It’ll end soon enough. I know it can be a trying time.
I guess Mylecon is an American brand. I don’t think I’ve seen it here in Montreal. In any case, I think it’s the same thing as Oval; Simethicone drops.
Our oldest daughter, now 3 1/2, had colic from about 8 weeks to around 16 weeks. She’d scream from 8:30 pm to 11:00 or midnight each night. We tried rocking her, mylecon (sp?) drops, tylenol drops (recommended by her doctor), singing, etc. None of these remedies really helped.
Here’s what DID help, though: running the vaccuum cleaner in her room. Once the vaccuum was on, she’d quiet down and fall asleep. I don’t know why it worked, but it did.
Good luck . . . try to keep in mind that this, too, shall pass.
My son is 5 1/2 weeks old and has been going through two crying spells a day. One at 10 am and one at 10 pm. He used to cry until about 1 am, but after that he would sleep until 5am. Now he is down to about an hour of crying.
The Mylicon drops weren’t enough for him. It would get the gas out, but there was always more. Then we got Gripe water from http://www.colicease.com which seems to help more.
Everyone else has given good advice, but I just thought I’d contribute my experience with my son. I thought he was colicky–he’d cry from about 6pm until he finally fell asleep around 7:30. Every single evening. Except on the two evenings a month I took him with me to a club meeting. Those nights, he was quiet and content. After awhile I realized–he wasn’t colicky at all, he just hated the idea of going to bed. He cried when he sensed bedtime creeping up on him, but if we went out, it didn’t seem like routine, and there were interesting people to look at, etc. When I saw the timing of your youngster’s crying jag, my son’s immediately came to mind. There isn’t really much you can do about it, except maybe try a different bedtime ritual, or change his bedtime to a little later. I found that nursing him in a darkened room helped–we had it set up so he was sleeping right next to our bed, so I could lie right down and nurse him to sleep. If I tried rocking him, or nursing in a chair, he immediately suspected something was up, but for some reason lying down in the dark and nursing wasn’t so upsetting. Go figure.
Our daughter was very colicy from the age of 3 weeks to about 9 months. She had (and has) amazing capacity to yell.
=)
We did all the research, and tried all the remedies, and found that nothing really solved the problem, but a few things helped. She eventually (and slowly) came out of the PO’d Baby stage.
Nobody knows what the heck Colic is. Two main theories are that it is a gastrointestinal ‘problem’ and that it is a response to ‘neural overload’. Our munchin seemed to fall into the neural overload category and was soothed only by constant rocking/singing (for hours on end).
I heard a theory that the peristaltic waves of the intestines are not coordinated in an infant, maybe the nervous supply to the intestines is not fully mylinated, and that’s what causes colic. His recommendation was to apply warmth by holding the baby up against you or wrapping your hands around its belly. It seemed to work for us but you get an awful earful until it works. It would also explain why alcohol used to work in the old days before alcohol to babies became not PC, because alcohol suppresses peristalsis.
What you eat can indeed effect the baby. Have your wife keep a log of what she eats, and see if there is any pattern.
My first son went into a crying fit if I had anything acidic, fruit included. I had to eventually stop nursing him early as all I could eat was toast (exageration) and he did well on formula.
All kids are different of course, and YMMV. I always held him while he cried though, so he would know I was there even if I couldnt make it better.
Try this link - the way you are feeding could be an issue. This link has info on how to id AND solve the problem… My son (brendan) has a milk allergy, and I had an oversupply on top of that. Not to mention a sucky latch (which is still a problem, but tolerable). Milk allergy is rare, but the same symptoms occur with oversupply, timed feedings (X minutes on one side, then switch), latch issues, etc. Don’t kill your diet until you’ve tried the other alternatives - they’re far more likely to be the problem than diet (oh, and if oversupply is the problem, the one bit of dietary advice from me is to cut out any oatmeal in her diet - that’s a big supply booster… )
BTW, it isn’t about TRUE lactose intolerance, just that when you get too much foremilk at once, and not enough fat to slow it down. The article is great at explaining the mechanics, including why their poop turns different colors (something I’d often wondered).
Last paragraph should be:
BTW, it isn’t about TRUE lactose intolerance, just that when you get too much foremilk at once, and not enough fat to slow it down, it functions much like lactose intolerance - including major gas pains (colic!). The article is great at explaining the mechanics, including why their poop turns different colors (something I’d often wondered).
Oh, and BTW, the info in that link is well known in some circles, but not widely known elsewhere. I wish it were, because this info really helped Brendan, and practically saved the sanity of a friend’s brother, whose baby had been screaming 24/7 with no ‘apparent’ reason for almost 4 months… and stopped screaming within 24 hours of trying some different feeding patterns as identified in the article. In the US, diet is often blamed when it is something else (often oversupply or timed feeds). Diet can indeed be the culprit, too, but it is the first place people go when they might have more success looking elsewhere.
This info never showed on my radar when I looked for colic info with Gabriel (4 1/2 years ago). I had an oversupply with him, too. Never knew it. Survived, but wish I’d known what I know now. REALLY wish I knew it.
best of luck, and hope this is the solution for you.
