My Colicky Daughter

by Fran
(Federal Way, WA)

My daughter was born 3 weeks early and had some medical problems, among them severe jaundice, that kept her in the hospital for almost 3 weeks.

This was long enough ago that she was already eating solid food when we took her home. She had cereal in the hospital and her first meal at home was peas. I'm not sure if the idea of feeding infants so early was the cause of her colic or not but soon after we arrived home she developed colic.

It seemed to be at its worst in the early afternoon, about the time she would be having lunch.

My husband worked nights and her crying would wake him up from a sound sleep but we found this to be a bonus in disguise. He was able to feed her and calm her down much better than I could.

Now that we are learning a little more about these things we think it was because his body generated so much heat that he acted like a mild heating pad for her. He would put her in her baby chair to feed her and keep his hand on her tummy, which must have been the warmth she needed and then when he burped her putting her on his shoulder added even more warmth.

We didn't know that then, all we knew was that she did much better for him than for me.

We thought that I got too stressed and it transmitted itself to her.

That may also be part of the problem but I still think it was the warmth of daddy that did it!