Main Points:
Put cotton in your ears and gin in your stomach!
19th-century colic advice
Through the centuries, experts continually thought up colic treatments to fix whatever they believed to be causing their baby’s unhappiness. These false assumptions led them to champion many different types of therapies that have proven to be total dead ends: alcohol, sugar water, sedation, anti-cramp medicine, and burp drops. There are, however, besides the 5 “S’s” a few other ways of helping crying babies that are true paths.
When you want a break from the 5 “S’s,” here are three time-honored tricks for colicky babies that work well: massage, walks outside, and a little extra warming.
Massage is love which is one unique breath, breathing in two.
Frederick Leboyer, Loving Hands
Massage is a very ancient treatment for colic. Its extraordinarily soothing effects are based upon our oldest and most profound sense—touch.
There’s an old saying, “A child is fed with milk and praise,” and I would say a baby is fed with milk and caresses. Your baby’s loving caresses began inside your womb, where she enjoyed a feast of velvety cuddling twenty-four hours a day. Once born, your baby still loves to be touched and stroked. Your skin-to-skin embrace of her is the touch equivalent of calming, hypnotic movement or sound.
Cuddling Builds Brains
A recent study from McGill University asked, “Does extra cuddling make animals smarter?” The researchers looked at two groups of little rat pups. The first group had very “loving” mothers who licked and stroked their babies a lot. The second group received much less affection from their moms.
When the rats became old enough to be taught mazes and puzzles, scientists noticed that the cuddled animals were extrasmart. They had developed an abundance of connections in a part of the brain crucially important in rats (and people) for learning.
The moral of the story is clear: Cuddling your baby feels good, and it may even boost her IQ!
Touch is not only a wonderful reminder of a baby’s time as a fetus; like milk, it’s an essential “nutrient” for her growth. In fact, in some ways it’s even more beneficial than milk. While stuffing your baby with extra milk won’t make her any healthier, the more tickles and hugs she gets, the stronger and happier she’ll become.
In 1986, a brilliant baby-watcher named Tiffany Field confirmed the benefits of touching in a study on the effects of massage on premature babies. She had nurses massage a group of preemies for fifteen minutes, three times a day, for ten days. The results were astounding. Massaged babies gained forty-seven percent more weight than expected and were able to go home almost a full week earlier than babies who didn’t get massaged. In an equally stunning follow-up study, when the massaged babies were examined one year later, their IQ’s were higher than the babies’ who were handled routinely. Dr. Field also discovered that when healthy full-term babies were massaged for fifteen minutes a day, they cried less, were more alert and socially engaged, gained weight faster, and had lower levels of stress hormones.
Beautiful, big-eyed Mica was so sensitive and vigilant that she often had difficulty shutting out the world, even when she was exhausted. When Mica was one month old, I recommended that her parents, Lori and Michael, try using massage to help their daughter wind down:
At first Mica seemed leery of this type of touching. She accepted some foot massage, but that was as far as I could get before she became unhappy. I stuck with it, though, and after a week, Mica began to enjoy the touching. She even became excited when she heard me rub massage oil into my hands. I was delighted! Massage time soon became our special bonding time. Mica would deeply relax and sometimes fall asleep. I loved doing this for our daughter. And best of all, it helped her become calmer in general and to get over her evening fussies.
Lori, Michael, and Mica
Here are the five steps for giving your baby a perfect massage:
1. Prepare for pleasure—About an hour after your baby has eaten, remove your jewelry, warm the room, dim the lights, take the phone off the hook and, if you like, you may turn on some soft music. Have some slightly heated vegetable oil (almond oil is great) within easy reach, and some wipes and diapers too, just in case.
2. Bring yourself to the moment—Sit comfortably with your naked baby right next to you or on your bare, outstretched legs. Place a towel around her body to keep her warm. Now take five slow, deep breaths to allow yourself to be fully present for this wonderful experience. Massage is not a mechanical routine, it’s an exchange of love in one fleeting and tender moment of time.
The first few times you massage your baby, you may notice that you’re “in your head,” thinking about how to do the massage. Don’t worry: Once you become more familiar with the routine, your attention will naturally begin to focus on your fingertips, your baby’s soft skin, and your loving heart.
3. Speak to your baby with your hands—Rub some oil between your hands and start by touching your baby’s feet. Always try to keep one hand in contact with her skin and softly talk to her about what you are doing and what your hopes are for her life to come or sing a lullaby. Uncover one limb at a time and massage it with a touch that is fluid but firm. Let your massage strokes move slowly along her body, in synchronicity with your calm breathing.
Use smooth, repetitious strokes over her feet, legs, stomach, chest, arms, hands, back, face, and ears, gently rotating, pulling, stretching, and squeezing. Twist her arms and legs as if you were lightly wringing a wet sponge. Feel free to experiment with using your fingers and different parts of your hands, wrists, and forearms.
4. Reward your baby’s tummy—Thank your baby’s tummy for doing such a good job. Bicycle her legs and then firmly push both knees to the belly and hold them there for ten to twenty seconds to give a nice, satisfying stretch. Then massage the tummy in firm, clockwise, circular strokes, starting at her right lower belly, up and across the top of her tummy, and ending at the lower left side. (This sometimes helps babies release gas or poop.)
5. Follow your baby’s signals—If your baby begins to get restless, it’s a sign to change your pace or end the massage. Wipe the excess oil from her body, letting a bit remain to nourish her skin. Bathe her with soap and warm water later that day or the next morning.
Why Don’t More of Us “Stay in Touch” by Massaging Our Babies?
Despite all the evidence on how wonderful touch and massage are for babies and parents, it’s still not a typically “American” thing to do. In part, that may be because parents have been cautioned that it might spoil their infants.
These warnings have had a chilling effect on how we raise our babies. In our culture, we don’t often stroke our babies and when we do our touch is usually muffled by layers of clothing. As previously mentioned, while many American parents hold their infants for less than eight hours a day, many parents in other cultures keep “in touch” with their babies for more than twenty hours a day. That’s why, sadly, from our infants’ perspective, the United States could be classified as a third-world country lacking a richness of touch and deprived of a balanced diet of caressing.
Giving your baby a massage is also wonderful for moms and dads because it can lower your stress and boost your self-esteem.
If you would like to learn more about the technique of baby massage, an excellent resource is Vimala McClure’s Infant Massage.
If our babies could talk, they would probably bug us, “Why can’t we live outside like all the other Stone Age families?” Our ancient relatives lived outside, and perhaps that’s one reason why some of our little cave babies get deadly bored sitting at home. For them, nothing is more fun than hearing the wind in the trees, feeling the air on their faces, and watching the continually moving shadows.
Some parents ask me how calming by being outside fits with the idea of the fourth trimester. For babies, a walk outside is a parade of calming out-of-focus images and jiggly, soothing rhythms. I believe they are lulled by this hypnotic flow of gentle sensations, like a constant, multisensory white noise.
So, when your baby is crying, try giving her a breath of fresh air. Going for a walk will also help lift your spirits and fill you with a sense of peace.
In the uterus, infants are constantly in “hot water”! That may be why so many babies love warm things. To help you soothe your baby when she’s fussing, try these “hot tips”:
• A warm bath
Every time their six-week-old son, Jack, was fussy, Kim and John calmed him by submersing him in warm water. “Jack always gets super relaxed when he is put into a hot bath. He goes into a Zen-like state and is mellow and ready for bed afterward.”
• A warm blanket
When her niece, Erica, was very fussy one day, Barbara heated the baby blanket in the clothes dryer for a few minutes, thoroughly checked it for hot spots, and then bundled Erica in it. Erica calmed so quickly that from then on, whenever she became fussy she got swaddled in warm wraps. (Barbara was always very careful to avoid overheating or burning her.)
• A warm hat
Covering your baby’s head makes her feel cozy and comfortable. Newborns lose twenty-five percent of their body heat through their heads, so a baby with an exposed head is like an adult walking around on a chilly night in underwear.
• A warm hot-water bottle
Dr. Spock loved to tell parents to lay their colicky babies tummy-down on a warm hot-water bottle. He thought it helped relieve stomach pain, the way warmth can help menstrual cramps, but more likely it works by putting soothing pressure on your baby’s stomach and turning on the calming reflex.
• Warm socks
As with a blanket, you can warm up your baby’s socks to make her feel extra toasty. Just check for hot spots before putting them on.
Warning: Keep Your Baby from Becoming a Red-Hot Pepper
Keeping your baby warm can be helpful, but overheating her is not good. It may make her restless, cause a heat rash, and there is a slight chance it can increase a baby’s risk of SIDS.
Pay attention to the following to avoid the pitfalls of overheating:
Although medical problems are not commonly the cause of colic, I estimate that ten to fifteen percent of extremely fussy babies cry because of one of four tummy troubles: food allergy, constipation, feeding problems, or stomach acid reflux.
Children who suffer from these treatable conditions may get some relief from the 5 “S’s” and the grandmother’s tips discussed earlier; however, what many of these infants truly need is a medical solution for their particular difficulty.
Here are a few hints on how to soothe these unhappy infants.
It’s believed that approximately ten percent of colicky babies cry due to food sensitivities. Unfortunately, doctors have no accurate test to check babies for this problem. To discover if your child has a food allergy, you must play Sherlock Holmes and eliminate foods from your diet or switch your baby’s formula to see what happens. (Always consult your doctor before doing so.) It usually only takes two to four days to see if the crying gets better.
If your baby improves when you eliminate foods from your diet, she may have a food allergy. However, sometimes this improvement is just a coincidence. To be sure your child truly has to avoid those foods, I advise you to wait for the fussiness to be gone for two weeks and then to eat a spoonful of the suspected food, or feed your baby a half ounce of the suspected formula. Try this over four to five days; if there’s an allergy the crying will return.
Most babies with food allergies are allergic to only one or two foods, with the most common, by far, being cow’s milk and dairy products.
Calcium Rules
If you’re breast-feeding and you stop eating dairy products because your baby is sensitive to them, rest assured there are many other ways to get adequate calcium in your diet. Besides calcium supplements, you can also get calcium from green vegetables (broccoli, leafy vegetables), sesame-seed butter, dark molasses, fortified orange juice or soy milk, corn tortillas, etc.
Eliminating dairy foods from your diet is not a risk to your child. However, if you stop dairy products for more than a few weeks, speak to your doctor to make sure you’re meeting your body’s calcium needs.
That’s why doctors often recommend bottle-fed babies switch from cow’s milk formula to soy. Many babies improve by doing this, but as I noted earlier, at least ten percent of milk-allergic babies are soy-allergic too. These babies require a special, hypoallergenic formula; ask your doctor about these.
Like grandma always said, “It’s important to stay regular,” and that’s especially true for babies! Fortunately, breast-fed babies are almost never constipated. They may skip a few days between poops, but even then the consistency is pasty to loose. Bottle-fed babies, on the other hand, do get constipated, but several commonsense approaches can usually help rectify the problem:
• Change the formula—Sometimes changing your baby’s formula can help resolve her constipation. Some infants have softer stools when they drink concentrated formula versus powder (or vice versa); others do better with cow’s milk formula versus soy; and, rarely, some may improve with a switch to a low-iron formula.
• Dilute the mix—Your baby’s poops may improve when you add one ounce of water or half an ounce of adult prune juice (organic is best), once or twice a day, directly to the formula. (Never give babies under one year of age honey or corn syrup as a laxative.)
• Open the door—One last way to relieve constipation is to get your baby to relax her anus. Infants who strain to poop often accidentally tighten their anus. Like adults who can’t pat their heads and rub their tummies at the same time, many babies have trouble tightening their stomach muscles and relaxing their rectums simultaneously.
Try getting your baby’s anus to “loosen up” by bicycling her legs and massaging her bottom. If this fails, insert a Vaseline-greased thermometer or Q-tip one inch into the anus. Babies usually respond by trying to push it out, and they often push the poop out at the same time.
A Poop Advisory: Sometimes Constipation Signals a More Serious Problem
Healthy babies may skip a day or two between poops. However, less frequent BM’s may signal a more worrisome problem. If your baby goes more than two or three days without a stool, you should touch base with your doctor. He may consider evaluating her for three rare, but curable, diseases that can masquerade as constipation:
1. Hypothyroidism—This easily treated condition is caused by an underactive thyroid gland and may slow mental development if allowed to continue untreated.
2. Hirschsprung’s disease—This rare intestinal blockage happens when the rectal muscles can’t relax to let the poop out. Surgery can correct it.
3. Infantile botulism—This very rare disease temporarily paralyzes babies. It’s brought on by botulism spores that live in the ground and in liquidy sweets like honey or corn syrup (which should never be given to babies).
Fortunately, 99.9 percent of the time, your baby and your milk are perfect together. However, getting too little or too much milk may trigger severe crying.
It’s usually easy to tell if a bottle-fed baby is getting her fair share of milk: Count the number of ounces she eats. With breast-feeders, however, it’s trickier. If you are nursing, the following questions may help you to figure out if your baby is crying because she’s not getting enough milk:
Are your breasts making enough milk? If your breasts feel heavy when you wake up, if they occasionally leak, and if you can hear your baby gulping when she’s feeding, it’s likely that your breasts are making plenty of milk.
Does your baby become serene after a feeding? Well-fed babies are usually blissful, calm, and relaxed after a feeding.
Is your baby peeing enough? During the first few days of life, infants don’t urinate very often, but once your milk comes in, your baby should pee five to eight times a day.
Is your baby gaining weight normally? Many moms and grandmoms are always worried that theirs is the only skinny baby in town while all the other infants are little sumo wrestlers! To know if your baby is gaining enough weight, you need to put her on a scale. For the most accurate weighing, check her on the scale at your doctor’s office. Remember, babies lose eight to twelve ounces over the first few days of life, but thereafter they gain four to seven ounces per week.
Does your fussy baby become soothed and content by sucking on your finger or pacifier? Just because your fussy baby wants to suck doesn’t mean she’s hungry. Offer her your finger to suck on. If she sucks happily for a few minutes, she probably wants recreation, not nutrition.
If you answered no to any of these questions, you should call your doctor to discuss whether or not your tiny one’s cries might be a sign of hunger.
If extra milk calms your baby’s crying and you want to rebuild your milk supply, you probably can. Speak to your doctor, a lactation consultant, or a La Leche League leader for advice. You can try some of these remedies too:
1. Diagnose the Problem
Regardless of the cause, if you are having pain or any nursing problem, get help as soon as possible.
2. Increase Your Supply. Once you know your breasts are fine and your baby is sucking well, the next step is increasing your milk supply. Here’s how:
3. Supplement Your Baby’s Breast Milk with Some Formula. You could also help your hungry baby by giving her pumped milk or formula. This can be given in a teaspoon, eye dropper, or syringe, but it is often best to use a feeding device called a Supplemental Nursing System (SNS). The SNS is a bag of milk connected to a soft, strawlike tube, which allows the baby to drink from the bag and the breast simultaneously. This method helps a woman rebuild her milk supply without teaching her baby the wrong way to suckle, a problem that may occur when nursing babies are given too many bottles.
Some babies love milk so much, they overeat. These kids guzzle down four to eight ounces each feeding and then vomit it all up because, as the saying goes, “their eyes were bigger than their stomachs.” Other babies, however, guzzle not out of gluttony but out of self-protection. Their mom’s milk is pouring out of her breast so quickly that they’re trying not to choke.
Flooding can also occur in bottle-fed babies. Rubber nipples that are too soft or have holes that are too big can make a baby with a strong suck feel like she’s drinking from a running faucet.
If you think your milk flow may be too much for your baby to handle, look for these signs:
If you answer yes to these questions, try expressing one to two ounces from your breasts immediately before the next feeding. Also, during the feed, hold your nipple between your second and third fingers, like a cigarette, and press against the breast to slow the flow of milk, or try nursing lying down (with your baby next to you or on top of you) and see if the meal goes better.
Bitter crying during or just after a feeding may indicate insufficient or excessive milk flow, a strange taste in your milk, a strong gastro-colic reflex in your baby (see Chapter 4), or that your baby is one of about three percent of colicky babies who suffers from stomach acid reflux.
If you suspect acid reflux as the cause of your baby’s misery you should review the telltale signs of reflux mentioned in Chapter 4. Of course, if you think your baby may be suffering from this problem, you should consult your baby’s doctor.
Through the years, several remedies have been recommended to alleviate reflux. A few are dead ends, but many are true paths to success.
Through the ages, herbal teas that aid digestion have been recommended for unhappy babies. Traditionally, mothers brewed either chamomile, peppermint, fennel, or dill for their babies’ upset tummies.
The ancient “roots” of this practice are reflected in the names chosen for these herbs. In Spanish, the word for peppermint is yerba buena, meaning the good grass; in Serbian it’s nana, meaning grandmother. Dill has settled stomachs in ancient Egypt, Greece, and in Viking times. Its English name derives from the Old Norse word dilla, meaning to soothe or calm.
Chamomile is said to have calming properties; peppermint eases intestinal spasms; dill helps soothe gas; and fennel dilates the intestinal blood vessels, facilitating digestion and producing a warming effect.
As much as I love herbal teas, I’m sorry to say that little proof exists that they offer any real benefit for colicky babies. However, they do no harm, so if you would like to give some to your baby, here’s how:
To make dill or fennel tea, steep two teaspoons of mashed seeds in a cup of boiling water for ten minutes. A teaspoon of this may be given to a fussy baby several times a day. If your baby refuses the tea, you may sweeten it by adding a little baby apple juice or sugar (do not use honey or corn syrup).
Additionally, dill can be given in the form of a tonic called “gripe water,” a popular folk remedy for colicky babies in Great Britain and the Commonwealth countries (although its effectiveness has never been proved).
Homeopathy is a philosophy of healing that teaches “like cures like.” In other words, the body can be made to heal itself by giving a tiny dose of something that would actually cause the very same problem if given in a large dose. For example, a homeopath might recommend minuscule amounts of poison ivy extract to stop an itchy rash.
Do homeopathic remedies work? Some parents swear by them; however, hard evidence is difficult to find. Hopefully, this will change over the next five to ten years as the National Institutes of Health gets results from studies they are conducting on the subject.
There are four main recommended homeopathic remedies for colic: chamomila, colocynthis, magnesium phosphorica, and pulsatilla. These may be given singly or in combination; however, in general the correct homeopathic remedy is chosen according to the specific characteristics of a patient’s symptoms—in this case, a baby’s fussiness.
As with Western medicine, it’s best to use homeopathics in consultation with an experienced practitioner.
The same uncertainty that surrounds homeopathy surrounds the claims that chiropractic or osteopathy can help calm crying babies. While there are some studies reported by these practitioners about the treatment of colic through the manipulation of the spine or skull bones, I have seen several colicky babies whose frustrated parents sought out chiropractic or osteopathic help with little or no success.