So your child has colic?
Colic is essentially trapped wind, although annoyingly no-one knows what causes it; not helpful when you’ve got a screaming baby, and that screaming can continue for several hours. However there is light at the end of the tunnel, it’s not permanent, most babies grow out of it by about 3 months. In the meantime you can try:

  • Warm Baths
    This basically relaxes the child.
  • Baby Massage
    This is essentially another winding position but there are other benefits not associate with colic (see post on baby massage for instructions)
  • Lying Baby on their front across your knees
    Yet another winding position, sometimes its as simple as that, changing the winding position (word of warning make sure you have a cloth near babies head as you would with normal winding; over the shoulder as they may be sick)
  • Raising the mattress
    Not too sure why this works but it does seem to ease the symptoms
  • Giving your child cooled boiled water
    Just a word of warning with this one don’t give them more than 1oz at a time as this is also a remedy for constipation, so it will cause them to have a pretty explosive nappy (speaking from experience)

  • Changing the milk
    This mainly applies to formula fed babies, as certain types of milk do not always agree with your child. This was the case with my daughter, I breast fed her for the first 8 weeks but then had to put her on formula as I was on antibiotics; the first type I tried didn’t suit her, making her really sick aswell as having really disgusting nappies add this to the colic and I had a very unhappy baby until I asked my GP who suggested changing the milk, which improved things greatly.
  • Medicine
    There are loads of remedies you can buy from your pharmacist, however, the majority are only suitable from 6 weeks old. Personally I didn’t find them very helpful but a friend of mine did, she gave her son Colief drops. Ideally medicines should be a last resort.

Well hopefully there’s something there that will help, if not ask your Health Visitor or GP.

For those of you wondering what the symptoms of Colic are:

  • Screaming for several hours at a similar time every day
  • Drawing the knees up
  • Slight blue-ish tinge around the mouth

For more information on colic see crying and colic. Hopefully you will find something that works from the information provided here. Good Luck!