BABY COLIC: HOW TO RECOGNISE IT?
Colic in milk-fed babies is accompanied by quite typical signs. The first is definitely crying: sudden, unstoppable and lasting for hours. Then there’s the distress of your baby, a screwed up face, arched back and legs bending towards the abdomen. Lastly, there is tympanites and flatulence. Though it may repeat a number of times a day, it’s more common in the evening.
HOW LONG IT LASTS AND WHY IT OCCURS?
Usually, baby colic is a physiological manifestation of growth that starts around the second to third week of life and continues into the second month, and then resolves spontaneously at the end of the third month of life.
Although there is no unanimous consent on the causes, the possible suspects include:
Gas that accumulates in the intestine due to poor coordination between sucking and swallowing;
Altered intestinal microbiota balance;
Parents’ anxiety, which can make your baby more irritable;
A still immature nervous system that makes it difficult for babies to adapt to external stimuli and control their emotions.
BABY COLIC: WHAT CAN YOU DO?
First of all, it is important to make sure that the feeding is as quiet and regular as possible, avoiding continuous interruptions. In these cases, here are some tips to make feeding a quiet moment:
Keep your baby from getting too hungry at meals;
Make sure that there is nothing that can bother your baby;
Find a quiet place and a comfortable position for both of mummy and baby;
Calm your baby down before feeding.
If you bottle-feed, make sure that your baby does not have any difficulty drawing milk from the bottle, thus coordinating sucking and swallowing well. To help your baby, you can choose a latest generation anti-colic feeding bottle that favours physiological feeding by adapting to your child's sucking rhythm, thus reducing the amount of air ingested.
There are also positions that can help colic pass:
Lay your baby on their stomach, wrapped in a blanket, resting on your legs or forearm.
Keep your baby in a vertical position close to you using a suitable support, rocking him and whispering sweet words, without shaking them.
Here are a few simple gestures that can help:
One is a massage around their belly button, alleviating the spasm and helping air to pass.
Finally, bathing your baby can be helpful: in some cases, it relaxes your baby and is an opportunity for play and distraction at the same time.
