The C-word

No, not that one; the one that newborn parents dread: colic.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, as Baby E screamed and I struggled to get him latched on, Husband and I had a row discussion about feeding and it ended up with us giving Baby E a bottle of formula. He gulped it down and promptly fell asleep.

That afternoon, Baby E started screaming and screaming and nothing we did could stop him for more than a minute or so. This went on until after 1am with us holding him and trying to soothe him, until he finally fell into an exhausted sleep.

The following afternoon the same happened and he became upset even when I tried to breast feed him, so we decided we’d try another bottle of formula and see if that helped. It did help, for about five minutes and then he screamed up a storm again and could not be settled down at all.

We called Vårdguiden, the health authority’s helpline for the Stockholm area, and asked their advice. They told us to take Baby E to Astrid Lindgren, the children’s department at Karolinska hospital.

This absolutely terrified me and all the way in the taxi there I was checking his breathing and having images of him plugged into various tubes and equipment. Of course, by the time we bundled him into his little snowsuit, strapped him into the car seat and got him in the taxi, he had again crashed out into an exhausted sleep.

We were seen with a nurse within 10 minutes of arrival at Astrid Lindgren and he believed that colic was the most likely cause of Baby E’s upset. As he was so little, we were told that we’d be given a room as soon as possible to minimise the risk of infection. We then spent the next two and half hours in that room with Baby E soundly and quietly asleep and Husband and I taking it in turns to try and sleep on the child-sized hospital bed provided.

The doctor who examined him in the early hours of the morning was able, thank god, to eliminate anything serious, which pretty much left just colic as the cause. She thought this unlikely as well as colic normally affects babies from about six weeks old and Baby E was only nine days old at this point. After consulting with a colleague though, she said that colic it probably was and that dairy in my diet could be the problem.

So we took our little snow-suited bundle back home and tried to get a few hours of sleep.

On reading up more about colic the next day, I discovered that there are a few different causes that are suspected:

• An incorrect latch during breastfeeding
• A developing nervous system
• Intolerance to cow’s milk
• Difficult birth

In Baby E’s case, we think the most likely cause is a cow’s milk intolerance and that the two doses of formula were the culprit, and possibly also a bad latch. Since mid-week, he has been getting much better in the evenings and although he requires a lot of burping, we have had little of the endless screaming of Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights. In addition, I’ve also pretty much eliminated dairy from my diet and we’re also giving him probiotic drops once a day and lactase drops before every feed (to help him burp).

The nurse at the BVC (barnavårdscentralen) – the equivalent of a health visitor – has suggested that after two weeks I gradually reintroduce dairy into my diet. If the problem recurs, then we know it’s my diet that’s to blame and I can cut out dairy again and start taking calcium supplements. If not, then it was either a cow’s milk intolerance to the formula or a bad latch initially during breastfeeding.

So, the end result is that we’re getting there in eliminating the colic but I guess we might never know what the real cause was. But as long as it’s gone, that will keep me happy.