Colic most often starts when a baby is about 2–5 weeks old and gets better by the time the baby is 3–4 months old. Any baby can have colic.
A healthy baby may have colic if he or she cries or is fussy for several hours a day, for no obvious reason. Colicky babies often cry from 6 p.m. to midnight. Colicky crying is louder, more high-pitched, and more urgent sounding than regular crying. Colicky babies can be very hard to calm down.
No one knows for sure what causes colic. Colic usually has the following features: Timing: It usually begins at approximately 2 weeks of age and goes away by 4 months of age. Within the day, crying is concentrated in the late afternoon and evening hours.
Colic can start a few weeks after birth. It's generally the worst between 4 and 6 weeks of age. Babies usually grow out of colic by the time they are 3 to 4 months old.
Colic is thought to be due to swallowed air, so holding the baby in an upright position when feeding may help to reduce the amount of air swallowed. If the baby is bottle-fed, a fast-flow teat will help to reduce the amount of swallowed air by allowing milk to flow freely when the baby sucks the teat.
Colic is a very common condition affecting 1 in 5 babies, regardless of whether they're breast or formula-fed.
Colic usually starts when babies are about 3 weeks old. It gets worse when they are between 4 and 6 weeks old. Most of the time, colicky babies get better after they are 6 weeks old, and are completely fine by the time they are 12 weeks old.
Even though they may cry a great deal, colic is neither dangerous nor harmful. Experts say that colic has no long-term effects and an infant with colic will gain weight and feed normally. Colic is relatively short-lived.
Let your baby cry—for a little while. If walking, rocking, singing, massaging, and the like don't seem to make a difference, put the baby in the crib for 10 to 15 minutes and see if he or she quiets alone. Sometimes a baby needs a little time alone—and you may need it, too. Take a stress break.
Also, babies with colic may burp frequently or pass a significant amount of gas, but this is thought to be due to swallowing air while crying, and is not a cause of colic.
What Are The Symptoms of Gas? Just as crying is a fact of baby life, so, too, is baby gas. But when your infant has painful gas, especially if it's frequent, it can cause your baby to cry or become fussy—until it's passed; unlike colic, which causes crying and fussiness that lasts for hours across days and weeks.
Your doctor may run some tests to rule out the most common causes of infant discomfort. If everything comes back clear, your child's fussiness may be caused by colic. To qualify as colic, crying usually meets or exceeds “the rule of three's”: Occurs at least three days a week.
Colic typically starts a few weeks after birth, and hits it worst at 4-6 weeks of age.
Give Them a Burp
A crying baby can gulp down a lot of air. That can make them gassy and bloated -- and make their crying worse. Burp them with gentle thumps on their back. The classic position -- with the baby's head over your shoulder -- works, but can leave a trail of spit-up down your back.
Episodes of colic usually peak when an infant is about 6 weeks old and decline significantly after 3 to 4 months of age. While the excessive crying will resolve with time, managing colic adds significant stress to caring for your newborn child.
Excessive crying usually occurs at the same time every day: Although colic can happen at any time, day or night, most babies experience it later in the afternoon or at night, and it will usually happen at the same time on most days. Parents often refer to this as the “witching hour.”
One reason colicky babies can fuss more at night, he explains, is that serotonin levels peak in the evening. This imbalance, the theory goes, naturally resolves when babies start making melatonin, which relaxes intestinal muscles.
A new system that involves the five S's — swaddling, side/stomach positioning in the parents' arms, shushing, swinging, and sucking — can calm most crying infants, Dr. Karp said. This activates the baby's calming reflex during the first three to four months of life by mimicking experiences in the uterus.
As mentioned above, overfeeding, underfeeding, and feeding inappropriate foods can cause colic.
Conclusions: Removing bananas from the maternal diet may reduce colic. The consumption of a protein-rich maternal diet, grapes, lemons and potatoes by breastfeeding mothers may protect infants from colic.
This was confirmed by another study, which also demonstrated the reappearance of colic in a majority of such babies, after dairy foods were reintroduced into the mother's diet. Many of these babies developed colic when their mothers were given whey from cow's milk.
Three Types of Colic
True intestinal colic can be divided into three types: gas colic, obstructive lesions, and functional obstructions. Gas colic is the simplest and most common type.