The Ultimate Guide to Solving your Baby’s Colic/Silent Reflux/Fussyness (from a Mom who’s been there 3 times)

To say I have a lot of experience with “colic” is an understatement. I’ve had 3 “hard” babies in a little over 3 years, all with similar symptoms and different causes. Lots of crying (from me and the babies) and lots and lot of sleepless nights later, I have a passion for helping Moms cope with their more challenging infants. Looking back, especially with my first, I hate how much his constant crying robbed so much of the sweet joy of his newborn days.

First, colic is more a description than a condition. Your baby doesn’t really have “colic”. Colic is a catch all phrase (renamed the period of purple crying) for a baby who cries often and it’s hard to find the cause.

Second, I strongly believe that all babies are individuals from the start. While there are some generalities in dealing with babies, there are few absolutes. There are few things that get under my skin more than when people say, “All babies _______.” Or, “That is just boys.” Or, “Girls do ____.” Because, let’s face it, we are all created uniquely. From the very beginning, we have different preferences and personalities.

When I share these things, I am simply saying some of these things worked for us. Some worked for one of our sons and not another, some worked for all three, and I hope some of these things may work for you. Think of these suggestions as a trouble-shooting manual. If something helps, great. If not, move on to the next thing. But, also know God has chosen you specifically to be your son or daughter’s Mama. He will give you wisdom. There is an abundance of conflicting advice on the internet. It can be enough to make a sleep deprived, depressed, first time Mom lose her mind! Full disclosure, I almost cried today trying to get our 3rd baby to sleep while I was out and about this morning when I saw another Mom push her baby by me who was soundly sleeping in his carseat (I can literally count on one hand how many times combined any of my children has spent sleeping for any length of time in their carseat or stroller).

So Mama of the more “challenging” baby, I see you. I am with you, and although you may not know many who have had as difficult of a time adjusting to motherhood as you do, I get it. Sometimes I look around and think, am I doing this all wrong? Why has getting my babies to eat, sleep, use the bathroom (I mean the BASIC things) been so very challenging for me and seemingly effortless for others? So if you feel like you have tried all the things, and still cannot figure this whole make your baby stop crying incessantly thing, you are not alone. I remember being fearful to leave the house with C because I thought I wouldn’t be able to calm him down in public. He seriously cried pretty much all of the time (like SCREAMED) unless he was eating or sleeping.

Here are some things that have helped us cope with our 3 babies. This is my no means an exhaustive list. If any of these suggestions can help one family feel more sane and enjoy their newest little bundle of joy, it’s so worth the time it took me to write this down.

***this post may contain affiliate links at no cost to you***

1. RELFUX:

Does your baby have reflux? This does not mean that your baby has to spit up constantly. He may. But even if he does, he may be a “happy spitter” and if so, this is not the cause of the excessive crying and restless sleeping. Silent reflux is also a thing. Acid can be constantly coming back up the esophagus without ever actually coming out of their mouth and still causing pain and irritation. My doctor was willing to let us do a trial run of medication. We tried Zantac with two of our boys and Nexium with one. We only did a 2 week trial with each one and when it didn’t seem to help much, we stopped. Our doctor assured us that doing this short trial wouldn’t hurt our babies.  (side note: this can be controversial. You will find some who say that medicine does nothing, and others who claimed it was the magic bullet for their child. Sometimes you have to try different types or different dosages. In the end, like all things concerning your child, it is up to you to do what you think it best. For us, we were willing to try it if it helped our babies not scream all the time and get some sleep. Some other things to help with reflux are feeding at an incline (or laid back nursing), keeping baby elevated after feeds for at least 20 minutes, elevating one end of the mattress or sleeping the baby in a rock in play or something similar, feeding less with shorter intervals in between, burping often. (this deserves its own post which I will hopefully get to soon).

2. DIET CHANGES (if breastfeeding, or formula changes if not):

I tried cutting dairy with my first son, and after 3 weeks and no big change, I gave up. Perhaps, if I would have stuck with it things would have gotten better, but his stools always looked normal. There is also some debate about how long dairy stays in your system. I’ve heard everything from you should notice a change in your baby in a couple days to it takes a full 8 weeks for it to be fully removed. For my second, he clearly had issues as blood was seen in his stools. He also had frothy, mucousy, green poo (sorry if TMI, but this is a blog for young Mamas in need of some help). So I took out dairy, and also soy when dairy didn’t make a huge difference. For a couple months I took out dairy, soy, wheat, eggs and nuts. That was incredibly challenging, especially in the midst of taking care of a toddler and getting no sleep. It was hard to relearn how to eat and who knew soy is in literally everything?! I wrote a whole blog post (The Ultimate Survival Guide to Going Dairy (and *mostly* Soy Free) for Breastfeeding MSPI Mamas) on this subject full of over 25 easy, dairy-free recipes and tips. It is the post I so wish I would have been able to read as a panicked (second) time mom but first time dealing with food intolerances. Also, join the dairy-free breastfeeding group on Facebook for some great advice. Eating out is the hardest during that time. I am currently dairy free again, for our 3rd little guy and though difficult at first, you get used to it, learn what substitutions you can make and when it comes to eating ice cream and having a screaming baby or abstaining and having a happy one, there is some heavy motivation to choose the later. *Side note* Sometimes too much foremilk (known as foremilk/hindmilk imbalance) can lead to similar symptoms, i.e. green, liquidy stools. So you want to make sure you baby is feeding long enough on one side to get to the rich fatty hindmilk. Or you can try doing what one Lactation Consultant suggested to me (I still have trouble believing it would help at all because it seems a little crazy, but it can’t hurt) is to do a breast “milk shake” before you feed to help bring down the hindmilk. I am skeptical because your milk ducts aren’t exactly like cups, but then again, it’s worth a shot if you have a screaming baby. If you need help increasing supply, check out these tips.

3. PROBIOTICS/SUPPLEMENTS:

Are you on a good probiotic? Is your baby? Again, people have many favorites in this area. For us, Gerber Soothe Baby Probiotic Colic Drops was a life changer for our first, so we kept with it for our other two. Along these lines, there are a million and one “drops” on the market for babies who suffer from “colic”. With our first, I am pretty sure we bought every single one. Colic Calm, Gripe Water (did not help the crying or lack of sleeping, but amazing for curing hiccups), Mylicon Infant Gas Relief Drops, etc. Try one, try them all. Maybe they will help you- we didn’t find much luck there. My second had A TON of gas. He literally never slept more than 30 minutes ever for the first 7 weeks of his life. We tried the Windi the Gaspasser to help him pass gas. Some also swear by essential oils. We used lavender some with our first, but it didn’t seem to make much of a difference, but maybe it will for you.

4. BABY WEARING:

This was a life saver for our first son. One of the only ways I could get him to go to sleep for the fist few months of his life was wearing him in the Moby Wrap , holding a pacifier in his mouth and taking a walk outside while shushing him and patting him on his bottom and sometimes stopping to sway and bounce. Unfortunately his younger two brothers haven’t been as big of fan of baby wearing for sleep in the early days. I however, have a slight obsession and own a moby wrap ,solly baby wrap,

, Lillebaby, BABYBJORNand Mesh Water Sling. It’s crazy, I know. This deserves it’s own post, which I will get to one day. —– video tutorials coming soon! Subscribe so you don’t miss a post!

Check out this post for a complete review of our baby-carriers including video tutorials:

5. THE 5 S’s (HAPPIEST BABY ON THE BLOCK):

My recommendation if you do nothing is to check this book out on DVD from your library. It was a life saver the first night in the hospital with our first son. We could not get him to stop crying, and the 5’s rescued us. Dr. Karp has this whole theory about the first 3 months of a baby’s life being the “4th trimester” and gives suggestions on mimicking life inside the womb by using the 5 s’s (shush, swaddle, suck, side, swing ).  A note on swaddling: there will be people that swear by certain swaddles, but again, every baby is different. I learned this the hard way when I made a special trip to get the velcro swaddle me’s that had worked so well for our first son the first 6 weeks of his life and his brother hated them from day 1. So I did a hands up swaddle in a normal muslin blanket. In desperation, I have tried many swaddling blankets.

My go to has been the Miracle Blanket Swaddle, but I have tried the HALO SleepSack, the Baby Merlin’s Magic Sleepsuit, the Zipadee-Zip , the Love To Dream Swaddle UP., and the velcro Swaddle Me.(video tutorials of how to use each swaddle coming soon!) I’ve also heard great things about the Woombie and am tempted to try it out on baby #3 as he keeps busting out of his swaddle lately. Babies usually are swaddled until they start to roll (around 4-5 months). Some will transition earlier and some later (for transitions many of my friends have used the magic merlin, zipadee-zip or sleep sacks successfully, but we have just gone cold turkey once my boys were able to roll onto their bellies). A little piece of advice, if you are thinking a certain swaddle item may be “the one”, ask around and see if you can borrow one from a friend to try out for a little while before you drop another 20-30 dollars on some baby gadget with with hopes it will be your savior. I say that because I have wasted so much money on things that didn’t end up helping us. I have had many a late night feedings turn into me browsing amazon for the newest baby item that is going to be my solution to our sleep problem. I also bought every pacifier on the market for my second son and he would not take any of them. I have tried several with our third as well, and he too, sadly will not take a pacifier either (or a bottle). The MAM Newborn Pacifiers were a winner for our first. And they had to be the newborn kind, not 0-6 months for him. He actually only would take the newborn pacifiers until we finally broke him of his habit when he was 2.5!

6. MIND YOUR BABY’S WAKE TIMES
Make sure he or she is not overtired. I knew very little about infant sleep as a first time Mama. I had read parts of the Baby Whisperer and Baby Wise (which ended up making me feel like a total failure once Caleb was born since he could never be put to bed drowsy but awake without screaming bloody murder), and I naively thought babies would just put themselves to sleep when they were tired. But once I had Caleb and he was crying all the time and would be awake for 3 or more hours as a newborn- when the average wake time is 45 min- 1 hour for that age, I realized he wasn’t always crying because he was hungry (though that was part of it I later discovered) but because he was so overtired and needed a TON of help from me to fall asleep.  Precious Little Sleep blog has some great advice for each stage.

7. USE THE BABY SWING: (or Rock in Play, or Dockatot, or whatever sleep thing that may help your baby to get any length of consecutive sleep). For us, the Fisher-Price Snugabunny Swing was a life saver. We used it for the first 5-6 months for our first two and have also used it so far with our 3rd.

Of course, check with your doctor and do only what you feel is right and safe. We swaddle, have white noise going, in a dark room with a loud fan. I had high hopes of our 3rd sleeping on a flat surface from day 1, but alas none of our little men have even been able to sleep as brand new babies in the bassinet at the hospital for any length of time (fun fact our first two sons failed their hearing tests because they would not calm down enough long enough to take the test. Thankfully our first passed it the second time, but our second son did not, and we had to take him to an audiologist a month later). We waited until 5-6 months to begin sleep training (again, something with a lot of opinions and no judgement here; I may write more on this later).

8. TONGUE TIE:
Tongue Tie? I know, you may be thinking what? Or maybe you think I asked my doctor and she said it’s fine. Well, I noticed our first son had a significant lip tie right when he was born but I had 3 lactation consultants and my pediatrician all say it was fine. I so wish I would have trusted my gut and sought expert advice. I almost saw an ENT for our second, but he gained weight like a champ (he was 18.5 lbs at 4 months old) so I thought that couldn’t be it. However, I have since learned this can be an underlying cause of a lot of things and also that many “professionals” don’t know how to recognize a posterior tie, which requires a special maneuver to be seen. With our 3rd, I asked around and a friend shared  her Lactation Consultant and a Facebook group with me and we decided to get his ties revised (by a laser at 6 weeks). Apparently tongue ties can link to many things in adulthood and not only affect breastfeeding. They can cause or be correlated with several things including migraines, ADHD (because they can lead to sleep apnea since the way the tongue hits your pallet shapes your pallet and affects how you breathe), dental issues (our first has a cross bite), speech issues, tension in the jaw, neck, shoulders, the list goes on and on. Now do I think the tongue tie is the magic cure-all for everyone? No. But I have to say our 3rd little guy has been our easiest so far- after he got through his tongue and lip tie revision recovery (at around 8 weeks), he became happy most of the time (now sleep…that’s another story). And I cannot help but wonder, what if? What if I wouldn’t have ignored my mommy-gut and sought out an expert in the field of ties to evaluate my first two (even though I was told they didn’t have ties by my doctor and LC)? Maybe it would have saved us months of crying. Some will also say that you need “bodywork” done to have the release of ties be most effective. This may include chiropractic care or craniosacral therapy.

9. SHOW YOURSELF GRACE AND ACCEPT HELP:

This one does not need a lot of extra information. But, as someone who was so used to studying for an exam and making an A, motherhood threw me the GIANT curve ball of my life. I read all these books and tried so very hard to solve my baby’s problem of crying all the time and felt like I was constantly failing. There is a certain pride that comes with thinking your baby is sleeping well or eating well or doing whatever well because you did something to cause it. While our choices definitely affect our children, they are also individuals and we cannot force them to sleep. If everyone you know seems to be adjusting to newborn hood like nothing much has changed in their lives, it can feel so isolating to have an extremely difficult baby. When people ask how you are doing, it can be hard to even know what to say and humbling to admit you feel like you need help.  I am the worst at accepting help, but sometimes for my sanity, I had to. When you’ve tried all the thing and nothing seems to be helping, it can feel utterly exhausting and heart-breaking. Not to mention, you haven’t slept in months and that alone can make a person crazy. Mama, I see you. Ask for help. It is so good to know you are not alone.

10. IF ALL ELSE FAILS WALK OUTSIDE:

Something about the outdoors can be magic for babies. The only peace I would get daily with our first was putting him in the Moby wrap, holding his pacifier in his mouth so it wouldn’t fall out and walking around the lakes by our neighborhood to get him to sleep for 1-1.5 hours in the morning. God used those daily walks to save me.

11. CONSIDER MEETING WITH A LC:

Are you 100% sure your baby is getting enough to eat? I was SO determined to breastfeed no matter what because “breast is best” and so even though our first went down in percentiles, he was still gaining weight and my doctor said it was okay. I didn’t have to supplement. And I don’t think I had to for his health, but around 5 months when we were still getting no sleep, I had a Lactation Consultant come and do a weighed feeding and we realized he was only getting 2 oz per feed. So I began the journey of supplementing, which honestly made me feel like a huge failure (again). But he gained so much weight so quickly and soon became so much happier (plus we also slept train around that age). I wonder if he would have been happier if we would have been supplementing all along? I had too low of supply with C, too much with D and E. If you need tips for increasing supply- check here.

12. TAKE INTO ACCOUNT PERSONALITY:

While this doesn’t help you “solve” your child’s colic, it does help you understand him or her better. My oldest, he is a sensitive soul. And to this day, even at 3 he has very high highs and very low lows. He can go from super happy, to tears in one second flat and is finally getting better at regulating his emotions. No wonder when he was a baby he couldn’t ever calm himself down. His 4 month well check was the first time we were able to hear our pediatrician during our visit because it was the first time he didn’t scream the entire time. (I thought this was normal at the time but now that I’ve had two other babies I see that not all babies have such a struggle calming down). Enneagram is all the rage right now, but I have yet to read the book. It’s on my list. But, I am a lover of all sorts of personality tests- DISC, Myers-Briggs, Animal, Color, you name it- I’ve done a lot of them. And I definitely think that personality plays a role in how my boys behaved, even as infants. I read a post about High Needs Babies from Dr. Sears, and it brought so much clarity. Also, as a parent when you see some of the things about yourself that you hate that you struggle with in your children it can be so hard. Our first definitely takes after me with some of his highly sensitive, perfectionist, detail-oriented traits (and of course, my parents suffered through “colic” with me for the first several months of my life and changed my formula like 5 times). But remember, with every personality, there are good and bad traits, strengths and weaknesses.

If you are reading this and you have a baby who you can’t quite seem to figure out, my heart goes out to you. It is so hard. I pray you find something to help soon, that you can get to the cause of your baby’s “colic” and if you have any questions, please reach out to me. It can be daunting to have a list of things to try and not know where to begin. Try some things above if you haven’t already. And I know you’ve heard it a million times (and it never seems to help in the middle of the sleepless nights), but this will pass. I hope you can still treasure the happy moments in the midst of the more challenging ones. And remember, your sweet baby (“hard” or a dream) is so much more than his or her sleeping habits and ability to soothe his or herself.

As a word of encouragement, my 2 and 3 year old are now excellent sleepers. Our first started being over all happier around 6 months and our second was happier once I cut everything out of my diet, but didn’t start sleeping for any length of time until he was 8-9 months. Our 3rd became much happier at 6 weeks after he healed from his tongue and lip tie revision, and I cut dairy. He is only 3 months now and is not sleeping well at night, but is a wonderful napper. There is a light at the end of the tunnel! If I had to choose  between having a few months of really difficult sleep or years of toddlerhood sleep being difficult, I would choose the former.

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