What's Colic?

When Julia was very little, she suffered from colic. Nobody seems quite sure what colic is, but the symptoms are clear enough to many a suffering parent: incessant crying. Julia would go red in the face, wave her arms about wildly, arch her back and cry for hours on end. The combination of her crying and her obvious distress were very upsetting for us. This page explains the various treatments we tried, until we found a solution. This page is dedicated to all parents who have had to endure a similar experience.

Remedies

Colic is one of those syndromes which the medical profession, even midwives, don't seem interested in. Parents must find help where they can. We searched the internet for advice, and spoke to friends. The following remedies were of some use, in order of efficacy:

• Walking her round the house and garden. She seemed to find this comforting. Rocking her backwards and forwards whilst sitting down didn't work. However, there's a limit to how long you can do this before your arms ache!
• White noise. Any sort of white noise, such as a hairdryer or a mis-tuned radio, seemed to distract her for a while. However, the hairdryer overheated and cut out after a few minutes, and the sound of a mis-tuned radio was worse than Julia's crying!
• Car seat. Julia always seemed to find lying flat on her back uncomfortable. She was always a little happier seated partially upright in her car seat.
• Leaving her in the garden. Putting Julia in the garden and shutting the windows was guaranteed to give us peace! If she had just been crying for crying's sake, we could have coped with this. However, we knew she was in considerable pain, and this made it impossible to ignore her in this way.
• Infacol. This baby medicine is available over the counter in the UK. To be honest, I don't think it helped at all, but we didn't dare stop using it in case she got worse!
• Change of milk. The formula milk we used originally always formed a froth in the bottle as Julia drank it. About the time Julia's colic cleared up, we switched to a different brand which didn't froth at all. I have a suspicion that the two may be connected. Certainly, colic is supposed to be a result of tiny trapped air bubbles, and if one type of milk froths in the bottle, presumably it froths in her stomach as well.

The Cure

A friend of ours, Belinda, suggested that we take Julia to see an osteopath. I was very sceptical about this. Osteopathy is about bones and muscles, and Julia's problem was with her digestive system. Anyway, I have never had much time for anything that smacks of "alternative" medicine. However, not wishing to appear narrow-minded, and having tried everything else, we looked up Osteopath in the Yellow Pages. We found one nearby that claimed to specialise in babies and children, and made an appointment. For �25, the osteopath spent half an hour gently manipulating Julia's body. She told us not to expect anything for 24 hours, but that Julia would then be a lot better. We went away regretting the waste of �25. A day passed and there was no change. Then, over the next few hours, she gradually improved. The characteristic waving of her arms diminished, and she seemed a happier baby altogether. We had cracked it! We took her along to a second session a fortnight later, and she has never looked back since!

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