A New Baby – Colic

Friday, April 27, 2007

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Perhaps I spoke too soon , as our baby continued not to sleep and to exhibit signs of digestion discomfort and colic. We began to realise that when she did sleep this was due to total exhaustion (imagine how we felt) and whilst in all other respects she was fine and lovely as well, the sleep and feed thing was wearing us down.

Now having got over it I thought I would write a little on what we did to help. All the books say all sorts of things which if you do not have a conformist baby, is just plain crap. Much better to trust your instincts and be loving and caring, The sears Fussy baby book is very helpful on this, but otherwise here is what we did.

The Fussy Baby Book: Parenting Your High-need Child from Birth to Five (William Sears, Martha Sears)

Isis was hardly sleeping at all, would exhibit discomfort towards the end of her feeds that would continue to the next feed, by the time we got into the run up to bed she might be feeding every hour. She did not bring up wind easily and her poos were explosive to say the least…it seemed as if she was trying to pass all her wind through herbowel One tuesday the health visitor arrived to find the baby crying and my partner crying and everything going awry.

I took my second week of paternity leave to support her.

Firstly we took her to the cranial osteopath and asked her to concentrate on her stomach. The osteopath noticed that Isis stomach was very tense and showed elaine by getting her to feel, before and after treatment with the babies stomach. Even though we had taken her to the doctor for a 6 month check and numerous mid-wives and health visitors had looked at her, it was the osteopath who noticed she had a supra-umbilical hernia. This was not complicated by anything else and ruled out as a problem.

We did take Isis to the children’s hospital, on the advice of the health visitor…who said we should do it to rule out things like reflux being a problem….very caring, but a dirty dingy depressing place, where the appeared to me (not my partner who works for the NHS) to latch on to our mention of reflux and ended up giving us ritidine and Calpol.( paracetemol suspension) I am thankful we did not use them. I am of the opinion not to use any drugs on a baby unless it is a medical emergency and all other paths of healing have been exhausted.

I bought some fennel tea and made some up for the baby and got my wife and I to drink a digestif tea of fennel, mint, licorice, and other herbs and hoped a little of it would pass through to the baby. I used the excellent homeopathy for mother and babyâ book to diagnose for the baby and got some Carbo Veg and put it in cooled boiled water.

What we also bought was Infocol and Gripe Water. In the end we felt she had got into a pattern of passing wind through and her stomach had become tense and found things difficult to digest. Fennel is warming on the stomach and a great digestive, depending on the type of colicky behaviour Chamomile can also help. Carbo Veg is good for Colic and exhaustion and a 6x dose seemed to help her if given a little before a feed.

However its probably the old fashioned Infacol and Gripe water that saved the day.

So there it is …stop colic with:

Cranial Osteopathy
Homeopathy
Gripe Water
Infacol
and Fennel Tea.

We did try Colief and thought it might be working but stopped using it, after not getting any permanent results.

she still has her moments but we are getting some rest and it all seems to lighten up.

If your baby suffers from colic, or colicky spectrum behaviour, s/he is in some discomfort, hold them love them, most of all stay as calm as you can.Â Most remedies like homeopathy and osteopathy and even infacol do not give immediate relief, they take time, sometimes a week or so, or a couple of sessions to really get going.

At 9 weeks she began with help to sleep through the night from 9/10 to 6, this was with “cluster feeding” in the hours before putting her down.

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