What Is Colic?

If there’s one thing that can be extremely frustrating to a parent it is colic. Colic can create chaos in a household. It can cause all sorts of strains on mom and dad, and it can interfere with the enjoyment and those important bonding times between parents and babies. What’s especially frustrating about colic is that it isn’t always apparent what’s causing it, which means that it’s difficult, at best, to treat.

Colic is, from a medical perspective, defined in this way: if your baby cries for more than three hours a day, three days a week for more than three weeks, he may have colic. If he cries around the same time each day and nothing you do can seem to comfort your baby, it’s a good sign that he might be a colicky baby.

Colic is distressing to both you and to your baby. The good news is that colic is usually a very temporary things. Colic rarely lasts for a few weeks or, at the most, a few months. Once you’ve weathered the colic storm, you’ve made it past one of the very first big challenges to come your way as a parent.

There are some things you can try to do to mitigate the effects of colic. For example, you can try using gripe water. Gripe water is a drink that you can feed to your baby. It’s designed to have a soothing effect on your baby’s digestive system. This may help some babies with colic, as there are some who believe colic is related to gastrointestinal issues of some form or another.

If your baby has colic and you’re not sure what to do to try to treat it, talk to your health care provider. There may be a number of different things you can do to help calm your colicky baby.

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