Saturday, October 6, 2007

Colic Can Kill!

If you have a child plagued with infant colic, your thoughts probably revolve around three points all day:

1. Is there a "Cure for Colic"
2. Is there a way of "Preventing Colic" and
3. If your baby already is experiencing colic symptoms, "How to Deal With Colic"

And while I focus most of my attention on providing help and solutions to these three problems, parents of colicky babies searching for a baby colic remedy do need to spend some time thinking about what NOT to do when managing your babies excessive crying.


Never SHAKE Your Baby!

This the dark side of dealing with Colic. The "dirty little secret" or skeleton in the closet that many doctors, professionals and other advice-givers simply do not want to bring up or acknowledge.

The National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome states:

"Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) is the collection of signs and symptoms resulting
from the violent shaking of an infant or small child. It is a form of child
abuse. In America every year an estimated 1,200 - 1,400 children are shaken for
whom treatment is sought. Of these tiny victims, 25 -30% die as a result of
their injuries. The rest will have lifelong complications. It is likely that
many more babies suffer from the effects of SBS yet no one knows because SBS
victims rarely have any external evidence of trauma."

Now this is just a fancy way of saying that at least 300 children are killed every year by their frustrated parents and caregivers due to excessive crying. You can call it whatever you want (murder, or manslaughter are two words that come to my mind) but let's put this in perspective for you.

Imaging if 300 couples all lined up with their newborn in their arms and couple by couple these parents would step in front of you and allow you to hold their little person for no more than 5 second while you said good-bye and then walked away.

How long would it take...to hold all 300 of these children?

How would it feel to know that none of them would be able to celebrate their first birthday? And what would it be like to have to do it all over again next year?

This is the sad and scary truth that we are all fighting against. If you feel overwhelmed, then you need to take the following steps:

1. STOP! what you are doing
2. Place your baby in a safe place like his crib or his bassinet. I'm not advocating letting her "cry it out", but a few minutes of crying along will not be much different to your son or daughter than crying in your arms.
3. Go away for a few minutes. Take a shower or step outside onto the porch. Maybe call a friend to share your frustrations (someone that is caring an doesn't judge you...calling the wrong person can make you feel worse). Think about all the GOOD things that you and your baby will experience together and focus on those future memories, not the present difficult.

You love you baby, probably just as much as I love my three children. Colic CAN be overcome. It's not always easy, but there are resources available to you that can ease your child's suffering and enable you put a stop to the nightmare. Usually it's not just ONE method that will be the "magic pill" that ends up being your colic baby cure. Instead you'll need to employ multiple methods to keep the situation at bay. But whatever you do... NEVER Shake a Baby!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Your information very useful for me.
Baby Colic