Those who have just become parents get overexcited with the new responsibility that they have just got into – caring their newborn. It’s a very difficult task to handle a fussy child for the new parents. Parents who have an experience to handle the newborn get amazed and disheartened when their tried and tested methods for calming their new baby fail to get the positive results.
To handle a colicky infant is a major task; it doesn’t matter where you are falling on the experience scale of parenting. Identifying the difference between normal and simple fussiness and a full blown colic is very difficult. Your child doctor would use the rule of three to diagnose the colic infant.
1) If the baby cries desolately for 3 or more a day.
2) Cries desolately on 3 or more days per week.
3) Has a pattern of desolate crying that lasts 3 weeks or more
That means the baby is crying due to colic. When the baby starts crying inconsolably for hours together, it becomes extremely difficult for any parent to wait for three weeks for a diagnosis.
Before you get a confirmation from your baby’s doctor you can consider the following to be an absolute symptom of colic:
1. If the baby cries and cannot be calmed with any method which you usually do for example feeding, holding, rocking, changing etc.
2. Crying in set pattern like in the evening or in the middle of the night etc.
Crying for longer duration doesn’t mean that the baby is crying due to colic. If the baby cries after mealtimes you would want to consult to your baby doctor in order to change your baby formula to minimize the digestive troubles.
Some babies are more moody than others. It’s a normal tendency of most of the parents that they start considering their second child as a colicky infant, if their first child was an easy child, though that is not the case. Colic doesn’t reflect your parenting skills, nor does it reflect your baby cares for you.
Hence one should be attentive and be ready to try new solutions that will help to calm your baby’s colic in the long-term.
Puja has written 22 posts at A Mom and a Baby
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