Should i let colic baby cry

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Informational Alert. Crying Baby - Before 3 Months Old. Is this your child's symptom? A baby less than 3 months old is crying and you don't know why Crying is the only symptom The type of frequent crying called colic is included For crying with an illness or other symptom, go to that care guide Causes of Unexplained Crying Hungry Baby.

The most common reason babies cry is because they are hungry. They stop crying at the onset of feeding. By the end of the feeding, they are happy. Sleepy Baby. The second reason babies cry is they need sleep. They need their parent to put them in a comfortable position. It may be swaddled and on their back. The symptoms of colic can be like other health conditions. Make sure your child sees his or her healthcare provider for a diagnosis. He or she will give your child a physical exam.

You may be asked questions such as:. Blood tests and X-rays or other imaging tests may be done. These can help find out if your baby has other health problems. There are many tips for helping to soothe and deal with a colicky baby. Know that this is a common problem for new babies. Talk with your child's healthcare provider to find out more about colic and what you can do.

If your baby is bottle-fed, it may help to use a curved bottle. This lets you hold your baby in an upright position. To reduce the amount of air your baby swallows during feeding, burp your baby often. I'm sorry, but that seemed pretty damn unfair, considering I had suffered through nine months of restraint already. So, thanks but no thanks to the diet tips. Friends and relatives also provided me with all kinds of well-meaning advice on how to help calm my baby , but most of these people had only dealt with regular, docile, non-colicky newborns.

It didn't take me long to realize that the same rules do not apply, and it's a whole different ballgame when you have a baby with colic. So, in the name of solidarity and because diet tips and well-meaning-but-essentially-useless advice are anything but helpful, here are my tried and tested approaches to dealing with a newborn with colic, for the uninitiated:.

Before you do anything else with a colicky baby, you're going to want to get them in the tightest swaddle possible. I recommend finding a very burly man or a no-nonsense nurse from an Eastern European country in the hospital, to demonstrate the most restrictive swaddling technique one can employ. Colicky babies tend to be the most adept at Houdini-like escapes so you really have to up your swaddling game.

My baby was breaking out of his swaddle by Day Two of our hospital stay, even though he was only seven pounds. My partner and I learned some serious origami with our swaddles to keep our colicky baby feeling as enclosed and tightly packed in as possible, so as to emulate the feeling of being in my tummy.

Colicky babies tend to like it when you've got all systems going full force; the vacuum cleaner, the hair dryer, the white noise machine, your mom telling you how she would do things differently. I would just make our apartment sound like the inside of a black hole in the hopes that it would calm our baby the you-know-what down.

Sometimes, it actually helped. The last thing you want to do with a colicky baby is allow him or her to be still. Your best bet is to take that swaddled baby, put them in a carrier or stroller, and leave the house. My baby refused to sit in a stroller , and from what I've heard from parents of other colicky babies, they tend to only like scenarios that cause the most suffering and exhaustion from their parents.

So, you most likely will have to leave the house wearing your colicky baby. Either way, you have to leave the house unless you enjoy walking in circles because your colicky baby requires constant movement and bouncing. Do not be fooled by the sleeping colicky child, as it's a pure illusion. The moment you sit down with the sleeping colicky baby to enjoy your coffee, or simply to rest your weary body, they'll wake up instantly.

I spent the majority of my days as a new mom exploring the museums of New York City, because I couldn't sit down anywhere, and the subway was one of the only places that seemed to calm my baby down. But, by giving parents permission to put their babies down, he is treating the family members who may be suffering most.

One morning at the colic clinic, I met Juliana, a thirty-year-old woman from Guatemala, who was carrying her eight-week-old daughter, Maria, in a car seat. Juliana, a tall woman with shoulder-length black hair, was pale and had dark circles under her eyes.

She and her daughter were shown into an examination room, where Juliana spent nearly an hour speaking, through a translator, with Pamela High, a professor of pediatrics at Brown and the medical director of the clinic, and Jean Twomey, a psychiatric social worker. Lester, who had introduced himself to Juliana, observed the encounter through a one-way window in an adjoining room.

He limits the number of adults in the examination room, so as not to overwhelm the babies and their parents. In a telephone conversation with Twomey the previous week, Juliana had said that she worked as a day-care provider in her home, in Providence, and that in addition to Maria and a seven-year-old daughter she cared for three toddlers.

At the clinic, Juliana told High and Twomey that she found caring for Maria overwhelming. The baby also had trouble nursing; she would open her mouth and latch on to a nipple, but as she began to suck she seemed to choke. After a few minutes, the baby began to fuss. Juliana picked her up and offered her a bottle of formula, but Maria took only a few sips. Her cries grew louder and more insistent, and she began waving her arms and jerking her legs toward her belly. Over the next hour and a half, Juliana repeatedly picked up Maria in a futile effort to soothe her.

At one point, she handed the baby to High, who was also unable to calm her. Juliana looked skeptical, and High repeated the advice. Finally, Juliana nodded. The baby is boss. High prescribed a higher dose of Zantac, though she noted that Maria did not spit up much and told Juliana that it was unlikely that reflux alone was causing the colic.

A physical cause for colic can be identified in fewer than ten per cent of cases. Then Lester entered the room and smiled warmly at Juliana.

He told her how much he had enjoyed working in Guatemala. One of the key things we teach moms with colicky babies is that this unhealthy symbiosis needs to be broken. The baby must learn self-soothing. High and Twomey told me that the physician who referred Juliana to the clinic noted that she was very depressed. Four years ago, High conducted a survey of more than four thousand Rhode Island women, comparing the incidence of maternal depression and inconsolable infant crying.

In the mid-nineties, he studied forty-five children between the ages of three and eight who had had colic as infants and had been seen at his clinic.