Most parents will be familiar with the frustrating yet common infant condition known vaguely as colic. It’s considered mysterious, difficult to treat and leaves many new parents at their wits end. Don’t panic. Chiropractic care offers a simple, safe and effective treatment to colic.
What Is Colic?
Colic is a term used to describe excessive crying in infants, usually under the age of six months. You’ve probably heard many normal babies described as ‘colicky’ by their exhausted parents, but in reality, the crying experienced in a true case of colic is excessive, lasting longer than the expected time frame.
Usually, colic is diagnosed using the Wessel criteria. This designates a ‘rule of threes’ …show more content…
for colic, meaning the baby cries for more than three hours at a time on at least three days of the week. The baby is difficult to soothe, seemingly inconsolable, and the crying cannot be stopped by nappy changes, feeding, rocking or any of the usual methods used by parents. These episodes usually occur sometime in the early evening, but this can vary.
Colic is often caused by an underlying medical condition like gastroesophageal reflux, lactose intolerance or a reaction to some aspect of the mother’s breast milk.
This isn’t always the case, however, and medical practitioners are often stumped when it comes to getting to the root of the problem and treating the baby safely and effectively.
The Chiropractic Approach
Chiropractors have been successfully treating colic in babies for many years now, thanks to a safe, effective approach that treats the underlying issue rather than masking the symptoms with risky medications.
The childbirth process, while natural and certainly miraculous, can wreak havoc on your baby’s body. The ordeal of stretching and pushing through the birth canal leads to compressions in your child’s spine, potentially causing misalignment and pain. In the chiropractic tradition, we believe that alignment problems in the spine can have a knock-on effect on the rest of the body, causing problems with digestive functioning that leads to colic symptoms.
These difficulties can increase when any form of trauma happens during the birth process, such as the use of forceps or vacuum to assist in delivery, C-section surgeries or a prolonged pushing stage during labour. All of these can increase the chances of your baby suffering from
colic.
A chiropractor corrects these alignment issues using a gentle touch to safely readjust the back and neck. The process is completely safe and should be relaxing for your baby. We also recommend that new mothers who experienced difficult pregnancies or labour undergo their own chiropractic treatment to address any alignment difficulties that can arise at this time.