Our now 3yo son started with inconsolable crying a week or two after birth. I’ll cut out some intermediate steps*, but his doctor diagnosed him with reflux after listening long and carefully.
From there it got so much better, for immediate control of the problem we were able to give him malox, which soothed him and stopped the crying. Longer term he ended up referred to a specialist taking prilosec- hes since been reevaluated and stopped taking it.
*you could occasionally hear what sounded to me like swallowing, a nurse noticed and got the doctor to have a closer listen
I need to be quick as I’m wearing the little man right now, and he has little patience for my being still. We have done the simethicone drops (Mylicon) thing, and they have done us little to no good. But–he is being treated for reflux/GERD (15mg of Prevacid each day), though I haven’t noticed significant improvement. Right now we are testing to see if he has a cow’s milk sensitivity. I have been on a dairy-free diet since Friday (as he is exceptionally gassy, and has the “allergy ring” diaper rash), and he seemed quite a bit better yesterday. He does tend to cluster feed in the evenings. Today…meh. He’s been very sleepy and very fussy, and is more of a snacker at the breast (5-10min mini-meals), but not exactly colicky. He did have a phase of just constant crying, and nothing seemed to console him, so I just held him until the wave passed. It did, suddenly, and he fell asleep.
It’s hard to believe this is a Western problem, but who knows. Ugh.
Based on my experiences in northern Cameroon (which is culturally very similar to Mali) I’d say that while of course there are colicky infants, on the whole it would be far less common. I lived in a fairly dense neighborhood where people spent most of their time- including night time- outside. I’d estimate at any given time I was in earshot of maybe ten young babies. I don’t ever recall hearing one cry for more than a minute or two. Indeed, babies rarely cried at all, even on hot crowded long-distance buses and the like.
I assumed it was a mix of high parent attention (babies are always touching their mothers until they can sit up on their own) and pretty harsh discipline. Nobody hesitates to slap a crying kid.
FWIW, the infectious diseases mentioned earlier usually don’t strike children until they are a little older. Breastfeeding babies are often strikingly healthy compared to their older siblings. It is after weaning- when children start getting exposed to all kinds of unclean food and water and start running the risk of malnutrition- that infectious disease really picks up.
I hate to sound evil but ANY mammal can be conditioned with consistent repitition, as long as the cognition for cause & effect is in place. I believe the human mammal makes the cause & effect connection at 8 months and begins to develop foundation for cause & effect understanding by 4 months. (see, e.g., http://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/cd/re/itf09cogdevfdcae.asp)
As long as the baby is cognitively developed enough to make the connection, its probably very effective, with effective being defined as “baby ceases to cry for virtually any reason.” In the West, we don’t usually think of that approach as being beneficial to long term development.
This whole thing has such a smack of the Noble Savage about it… I understand how sleep-deprived, panicky parents want to turn to anything that might work*, but you shouldn’t have to traffic in obvious lies to sell your book.
*I know its not really the same but in the last few months before he died, my cat would SCREAM unceasingly every 2 hours throughout the night, I know how it gets to you never being able to sleep uninterupted. And when you’ve tried everything to calm them, and nothing works, you don’t whether to kill them or yourself…and then you feel really really guilty for having that kind of thought.
yes, punishing children for communicating their needs “works” only for certain values of “works.” At the same time, in war torn nations there could be situations in which controlling your baby’s noise is vital to its continued survival.
The thing is, colic typically sets in around age 2-4 weeks, and resolves itself by around 3 months. This, then, means the unconsolable crying ends before the infant’s basic cause-effect understanding sets in. So, slapping a baby (shudder) to make them stop crying during the colicky phase would not necessarily cause to realize crying=slapping.
I’m wondering how much of these reports have to do with translation.
An example: m-w translates colic as cólico, but the Spanish word means “acute, painful intestinal distress,” which does not seem to match with the notion of “a baby who cries a lot for no discernible reason.” If your baby is crying because his tummy is bothering him, you can tell.
Maybe, same as a Spanish mother would say “I don’t know what’s wrong with this kid, he cries a lot and we’re not sure why” or “he’s a crier” rather than “he’s got cólico,” mothers from Mali have other ways of facing what amounts to the same problem: the baby is crying, she has no idea why, but it doesn’t seem serious.