Soothe Your Crying Baby

Unfortunately you and I and everyone else who encounters colic must work on the assumption that it is a stomach ache because that is what it looks like and seems like. You would guess, as you watch your small person doubling up in pain, that he or she has eaten something appalling - a 20p piece, for instance, or the decayed remains of a small rodent. 
 

Soothe Your Crying Baby

But Junior is still on breast or bottle at this stage, so that can't be it. (It will be in a few months' time, when your baby starts experimenting with different foodstuffs - or 'foodstuffs', as the experts would probably call them.) There is simply no explanation for colic, and almost nothing you can do to relieve it. (Try laying your baby face down across your knees, support its little bawling head and gently massage its back. It might work, it might not.) 

Colic can drive you barmy. As the days stretch out to weeks and even months, you keep on wondering, what the bloody hell is wrong in there? You will never know. One day the colic will simply stop. A week later you will have forgotten your baby ever had it. Remarkably, colic seems to have no long-term effects on your baby's well-being or general good cheer. Indeed, soon after its disappearance is when many parents record their baby's first smile. It may be that colic is a rite of passage certain babies have to undergo. Their parents accompany them through it, endure it with them, celebrate when it's all over. As long as they haven't topped themselves in the meantime.
 
At least colic comes to an end. Teething, as one baby expert put it, 'starts at six months and goes on until the age of 20.' Unless your baby is one of those authoritarian political leaders born with a rogue tooth, you probably won't even have thought about dentition (another glorious technical term) until it happens.
 
Nonetheless, those teeth have been waiting under the gum since the womb, ready to strike. Their emergence provides a new and unexpected source of pain for baby, who will start frantically chewing on things to ease the discomfort. Teething babies also dribble a lot. They get bright red cheeks and can double as Belisha beacons. And they cry and cry and cry. You can put teething gel on their gums, give them something to chew other than your partner's nipple and wait for it to end. And then wait for it to begin again. Unlike colic, though, teething has an end-product: teeth.

You may miss the gummy look, and coo over old photographs of your little toothless one, but the teeth represent real, measurable progress. For instance, you can measure the indentation on your finger when baby bites you. Now it's someone else's turn to cry.

So how to soothe your crying baby? There are several well-tested methods. Billions of people have been testing them over thousands of years. Occasionally one of them works.
 
1. The supine position. Lie down on your back and lay your baby on your chest. They like the sound of the heartbeat, apparently. Rub your baby's back. Go to sleep. Snore like gurgling drain.

2. The tour of the house. Hold baby upright and lean him/her against your shoulder. (Make sure you have put a muslin there first to protect your clothes from dribble and rogue possets.) Wander around your home singing old pop songs badly. Blush when caught by partner.

3. Use a sling. For a tiny baby, get one that is made only of cloth. (The ones with aluminum exoskeletons are for babies of six months and older.) Strap in Junior and you can walk around, do the washing up, go to the pub, have sex with strangers in the park ... anything, really, as long as you keep moving, because that will loll Junior off to sleep. Babies love slings. Again, it's the contact, the beating heart, and Daddy's clothes smelling of sweat and drink. To find out more, you can check out Soothe Your Crying Baby.