We had a hard time with Thomas shortly after he was born, he pretty much slept most of the day which we thought was normal for a newborn, but he would then be awake all night literally crying from 12 midnight until 6am! It was a nightmare I tried soothing him to sleep, changed his nappy made his moses basket comfy I even gave him a warm bath in the early hours but nothing worked. I was so worried and scared at the time, I’m at home with my newborn baby who wont stop crying all night, was he in pain? was he uncomfortable? I felt like such a bad mum, I called the maternity ward for advice they said it was likely to be trapped wind, and to persist there was nothing I could do except cuddle him and try to sooth him to sleep.
The pattern of being asleep all day and then awake crying all night continued for a couple of days, we read about trapped wind and colic on the Internet how it can be quite painful for babies, after feeding they may have problems bringing up their wind due to their tiny immature digestive systems. Infacol was reccomended to me, Infacol is a sweet tasting syrup that you give you baby before each feed, it is meant to help bring up their burp. We tried Infacol for 2 weeks but it had no effect! Thomas was still crying all night, I was absolutely exhausted by this point – I wasn’t getting sleep during the day because I found it really hard to sleep in daylight, plus I had a house to keep and a husband to cook for. Nathan works for himself so it was important that he was alert and rested, due to this I decided to stay downstairs in the lounge with Thomas throughout the night, sleeping when I can on the couch. This was not ideal but Nathan had to continue to bring the money in as my statuatory maternity pay is no where near enough to support us.
After being on the infacol for 2 weeks with no effect, I decided to take Thomas to the doctors. Apparently there is two types of colic or trapped wind – One is trapped burp which is uncomfortable for baby but Infacol usually treats this quite effectively. The other type of colic is where the burp has been in their system so long it makes it way down into the intestines and becomes uncomfortable making baby need to trump, although its painful to trump – This is what Thomas had he was straining when crying and loud trumps would escape he would quieten down slightly -It was agonising to see him like this! The doctor prescribed us colief, colief was a godsend! within 48 hours he was like a different baby, he was sleeping well at night only waking for feeds we couldn’t believe it!
How colief works is you put several drops into the warm made up bottle of milk, leave for half an hour in the fridge – The ingredient in colief breaks down the lactose in the babies milk, this makes the milk easier to digest as baby’s digestive system is immature and unable to digest the lactose in the milk hence causing trapped wind or colic. We used colief in all of Thomas’s bottles, he quickly became like a different baby, he was happy and sleeping well I felt so much better knowing he was no longer in pain.
We continued to use colief until Thomas was 5 months old! You can buy colief from any Pharmacy over the counter but it is very expensive – Over £10 Luckily our doctors prescribed us colief on a repeat prescription which saved us so much as the bottles are only small! We tried to bring Thomas off the colief at 4 months but he started showing the signs of uncomfort again, so we put him back on the drops. At 5 months we tried again, this time we decided to stop using colief in one bottle a day, for a week, then after a week Thomas had 2 bottles without colief for a week and so on, eventually we were colief free and good!
Thomas has been off the colief now for a good month, he is sleeping well and generally a happy baby. I think starting his solids at 4.5 months helped to strenghten his digestive system which helps him to digest the milk lactose. At 6 months he now eats all sorts and is doing really well.
A couple of friends had experienced the same problems as I did with Thomas, I recomeneded colief to them and they agree it works in this situation. I really do hope that this blog helps someone out there who may be experiencing the same thing as me with their little one. If my blog has helped even one baby then I would be over the moon as colic is such an auful condition. Please do leave your comments if you have time, I would love to read about your thoughts and experiences.
