What is colic?

Having a newborn with Colic can be a heart wrenching and challenging experience for any parent. Babies can scream up to five hours a day for ten weeks. Pediatricians Lawrence Kagan and Jay Gordon along with Pediatric Gastroenterologist Dan Thomas review some important ways to keep you and your baby’s sanity during this trying time.
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What is colic?

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- Colic is a very unfortunate phenomenon that occurs in newborns, usually around the age of six weeks of age, and it can last as long as 16 weeks of age. It is an absolutely heart-wrenching experience for parents, because basically for 10 weeks of your child's life, they may scream for up to five hours a day. You have afternoon and early evening crying caused by an immature intestinal system's inability to manage gas.

- Avoid overfeeding the child. Burp the child before, during and after feedings, and please don't change the formulas multiple times, and definitely do not stop breastfeeding your child because someone has told you that maybe it's the feeding, and we need to put the child on a high-powered special formula that's hypoallergenic. That's not gonna work.

- The best thing that they taught me during residency training, was if you have a family with a baby with colic, send them to a good psychologist, a good counselor, because it's a really insulting ailment. The baby cries for three or four hours. Tells the mom and dad that no matter what they do, they're not good enough.

- The thing that I found to be the most effective management for colic is actually a probiotic, specifically the bacteria lactobacillus reuteri. And if it's given in a proper form and consistently, it can decrease total crying time in children by up to 50%. I encourage all of my patients in my practice actually to use it preemptively to try to avoid what is a very, very challenging situation.

ALL PARENTS

Having a newborn with Colic can be a heart wrenching and challenging experience for any parent. Babies can scream up to five hours a day for ten weeks. Pediatricians Lawrence Kagan and Jay Gordon along with Pediatric Gastroenterologist Dan Thomas review some important ways to keep you and your baby’s sanity during this trying time.

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