I am not the most open book person when it comes to discussing my personal life on social media, but seeing a lot of mom’s out there speaking about their experiences has helped me on this journey and I am forever grateful to them. This is the reason that I decided to write a few words on the dreaded “Colic” experience of mine.
First and foremost hats off and heartfelt thanks to @thelankanmama for all her stories and posts without which I might not even have the time to write this.
What is Colic?
There is actually no proper definition for this disease or condition, I am not sure how to even categorise it but it does affect most of the newborn babies. The common explanations are –
Colic is frequent, prolonged and intense crying or fussiness in a healthy infant. Colic can be particularly frustrating for parents because the baby’s distress occurs for no apparent reason and no amount of consoling seems to bring any relief – Mayoclinic.org
Colic is not a disease or diagnosis but a combination of baffling behaviors. It’s really just a catch-all term for excessive crying in otherwise healthy babies — the problem being, there’s no solution to it besides the passing of time. And it’s common, occurring in roughly 1 in 5 infants. – whattoexpect.com
As you can see there is literally no way to describe it. From my experience, these are what my little one went through –
In the beginning, I was utterly confused as it was not that he was hungry or he had a dirty diaper it was just non stop crying. When I checked with my paediatrician she prescribed the following:
So we started on this BUT we saw very little difference in his crying. Gripe water definitely did work most of the time but there still was a considerable amount of fussiness. When we were at our wit’s end I saw a post by @thelankanmama on a routine she follows for her little one based on a book by Gina Ford – The New Contented Little Baby Book. I never ever thought that this would be part of the solution I was looking for.
I am not going to get into everything that is in the book, it’s not about colic instead a simple guideline on having a newborn at home, what is needed and how to develop a routine for the little one which helps the mom immensely.
Ultimately this is what worked for our little one in combating colic:
After putting these steps into action it might have taken a week at max or two for Cayden to sleep through the night. Of course, there were a few odd days here and there but for the majority and up to now he has been able to sleep for a minimum of 7 hrs each night. Nevertheless, the most important thing that we needed was PATIENCE! It is also very important to observe and listen to your baby, which is pretty hard sometimes when the crying sounds the same throughout.
These were my ways of combating colic for the past 3 months and I am by no means an expert on the subject and know that this will definitely differ from baby to baby. I hope some of these will help the new mama’s out there to manage colic at some level.
Do DM me if you need to ask any questions and I will be happy to help you at any time.