What is Colic?

Understanding Colic and how to calm colicky babies

Colic is an ancient problem that has been poorly understood for centuries by parents and health professionals. While colic can be deeply distressing for infants and parents alike, parents have been at a loss for a practical approach to calming colicky babies.

Competing colic theories and cures have offered limited insight into the true cause of colic, or how to calm a colicky baby.

We explain what Colic is, the true cause of colic, and how to easily calm colicky babies.

What is colic?

Colic is the name given to babies who are very hard to settle, and who have difficulty with self-calming. Colicky or fussy babies lack the ‘state control’ to ‘regain their composure’ when they become upset. A simple working definition of colic is that a baby has colic if he cries for more than 3 hours a day, 3 days a week, for 3 weeks. Colicky babies have repeat bouts of extreme fussiness for no apparent reason.

It is often assumed that colicky babies are in some kind of pain, as they are not relieved by the comforts of feeding and holding, often writhe and grunt, may start and stop their screaming very abruptly, and have a shrill cry that resembles the sound they make when they are in pain.

Advice given to parents about how to calm a colicky baby has not always been helpful. Exhausted parents are often told that they must wait for their colicky babies to ‘grow out of it’. One of the compelling reasons why colic is NOT something parents have to put up with or accept is that in a number of cultures, colic is virtually absent. Parents in these cultures are so adept at responding to their babies needs that the distress we associate with colicky babies is simply not present. As we explain below, the skill of calming colicky babies is straightforward, and helps avoid significant unnecessary distress and sleep deprivation for parents and babies alike.

What causes colic?

Over the years many explanations have been put forward about the cause of colic. Common explanations have included that colic is caused by wind, by maternal anxiety, by tummy troubles, by a baby’s sensitive temperament, or by a baby’s immature brain. While there is an element of truth in all of these explanations, none of them fully explain colicky behaviour, or point to what we can do to calm a colicky baby.

The true cause of colic is what Dr Harvey Karp refers to as the missing 4th trimester. Human babies (as opposed to other animals) are born before their brains are fully developed, and before they are fully ready for the world, in order to stop their heads getting stuck in the birth canal. Babies are ‘evicted’ from the womb into an alien world which lacks the calming elements they were so accustomed to during their time inside Mum! This eviction is a rude awakening indeed, and it is no wonder that babies can react with horror to the strange environment in which they find themselves.

To understand the missing 4th trimester as the true causeof colic we need to consider the conditions for baby inside the womb. Inside the womb, a baby is very tightly bundled, she is constantly fed, she is exposed to 80-90 decibels of ‘white noise’ 24/7, and she constantly swings and jiggles about inside a sea of amniotic fluid. These are the conditions that calm a baby ‘on the inside’, and unless we make a concerted effort to replicate these conditions once a baby is born, their absence will be a cause of considerable distress to a newborn.