My son was born an angel.  But 3 weeks in, his angelic nature was replaced with hours of sobbing inconsolably almost every day, with a piercing cry that made me want to cut my ears off.  My husband and I would take 5-minute turns holding him in the evening, since that was all either one of us could handle without losing our minds.   5 minutes with me, then I would hide in the bedroom for 5 minutes to recharge while my husband had him, then 5 minutes with me again while my husband hid and recharged and so on for the dreaded hours between 7 and 10.  The days he didn’t cry for hours, he nursed for comfort for hours in the evening. And I literally mean hours. My day was basically done at 7pm every night.

While it was torturous enough to watch a small human be in so much pain, it was also difficult to fend off feelings of detachment and resentment, when someone so cherished seemed oblivious to every attempt to console.  Nursing, singing, rocking, pleading, talking, crying back, and driving were all met with a purple-faced wailing infant.  For my husband and me, it felt like our son didn’t even realize we were there.  And since the only way we could talk to each other during those times was to shout above our baby’s screams, it felt like we were fighting the whole time, even if what we were saying was entirely benign.  

This of course is the infamous colic.  It’s defined, technically, by a rule of 3: 3 hours of crying a day, for 3 days out of the week, for longer than 3 weeks.  But essentially it means a baby that cries for hours, for unknown reasons (although most theories have to do with digestive difficulties). 

There are no great treatments conventionally. No medications are available, and herbal therapies are largely hit or miss.  Most guidance given to medical professionals about how to handle colic cases centers around consoling the parents;  remind them that “crying doesn’t hurt the baby” (I don’t find that to be a consolation in the slightest) and that colic will usually go away by three months (at the 3 week mark when this started, this was the opposite of helpful- I had to withstand 2 more months of this before it might go away?!?). 

Enter homeopathy, stage right. 

Homeopathy, thankfully, works beautifully for colic.  Once I started him on his remedy, his crying stopped in two days.  He still needed to nurse frequently to comfort himself from 7-10pm, but that was a welcome change to me!  After 5 more days on the remedy, he didn’t even need to nurse (other than to eat of course) in the evening.  It took me two weeks to stop getting nervous at 7pm, but eventually I did.  The crying never came back (although he stayed on the remedy for many months).  He slept in longer stretches overnight, as he was no longer woken up every hour by gas, and so he, my husband, and I all became much happier, well-rested, people.  Interestingly, his remedy, Chamomilla, has the symptom of green stools with curdled looking pieces and frequent but small stools. These are all things commonly thought to be normal in a breastfed baby. However all of these went away after the started the Chamomilla. Perhaps this is an instance of common vs normal? We think green stool, curdled milk bits, and 12 stools a day are “normal” when in fact they are common, but not “normal”? Obviously we need more data, but I wonder.

Now this may sound like the overly-hyped up yammerings of a homeopathy disciple.  But colic is a beautiful illustration of all the things I love most about homeopathy:

1. You don’t need to know the physical cause of the complaint in order to treat it: What causes colic is largely unknown, although there are many theories.  The issue of course is that different babies have colic for different reasons.  Some may have migraines, some may have abdominal cramps, some may have trapped gas, some may be constipated– all of those things present the same way: a baby crying inconsolably.  But in homeopathy, that doesn’t matter.  You only need to know the symptoms in order to treat.

2. Sensitive populations, like infants, pregnant women, immunocompromised people, etc are able to be treated effectively and safely: Just because my kid was an infant didn’t mean he had to be treated with less effective but safer therapies; he was treated with the same medicine as everyone else, which was strong and effective but not dangerous to his health.

3. The whole condition is treated with one remedy: While the crying spells are of course the most important, he also had less gas, less spit up, his stools changed for the better and he needed less comfort from me during the day and night.  Nursing became about food, not comfort.  And note that the crying spells were not diminished they stopped.  The goal for homeopathic treatment (in general, there are exceptions) is elimination of the person’s condition, not just making it a bit more manageable.  For example, the goal for back pain is not to lessen the pain but eliminate the pain.  This is different than advil which will make the pain manageable for awhile, but not remove it. This is, of course, not always possible, but usually our goal in homeopathic treatment is to completely eliminate the disease. 

4. You can treat the condition, regardless of its severity: Colic, defined as 3 hours of crying for 3 days a week, etc, leaves a lot of parents suffering.  Many parents I met called their kid colicky, when the kid may have only cried two hours a night, or one hour a night.  Other parents called their kid’s one hour of crying a day a “witching hour”, and just learned to live with it.  Now I don’t want to over medicalize this, but just because something doesn’t meet the definition of colic, it doesn’t mean that we can’t treat it.  In other words, a remedy may stop a kid’s “witching hour”, or stop their colic, even if the kid is not officially defined as colicky.  Put yet another way, homeopathy can help before you are suffering enough to be diagnosed. 

If you have an infant with something like colic, or want to treat an infant with colic, there are a couple things to pay special attention to:

1. Body tension: Is the child arching their back, or bringing their knees up to their chest?  What other body positions do they go into when the crying is at its worst? Are the hands tense, the back, stomach, etc?

2. Color of their face/body: Does their face change color? Do other parts of their body change color when the crying is at its worst?  Does the whole face change color, or just the cheeks?

3. Perspiration: Do they sweat with the pains?  If so, where on the body, and does it have an odor?

4. Stools: Color and consistency of the stools throughout the day.  Do they cry and then have a stool, or the reverse?  Are the stools different before or after the crying?

5. Time period: When do the crying spells happen?  Is it related to day light (e.g. always start at dusk) or related to the clock?

6. Gas, burping and spit up: Does burping or passing gas help the crying go away, or not?  Is there more gas or burping on the days of a crying spell?  Or more spit up?  What does the spit up look like?  Is it curdled milk, fresh milk, mucus, watery?

Remedies:

By far the most likely remedy for an infant with textbook colic will be Chamomilla.  (Note, this is not the same as Camilia, a combination product of different remedies).  Chamomilla patients may have howling, weeping, restlessness and toss their body around.  Their face can be red, hot with sweat on the face and head.  Sometimes only one cheek will be red, and the other cheek will be regular colored or pale.  People who need Chamomilla are often worse at night (like most colicky babies), and better walking around/being carried.  In infants, this means they may not want to ever be put down, but rather want to be carried or always held.   Stools may be green or have some green tinge, with bits of curdled milk.  Spit up will have lots of mucus in it, as well as curdled milk. They will likely arch their backs and be hot during the painful episodes.

If Chamomilla is not exactly the right remedy, then Belladonna may be a better fit.  Like Chamomilla, Belladonna patients toss their bodies around, will scream, and may even spit or make biting motions, and bore their head backwards.   Belladonna patients are often sensitive to everything, especially touch and light.  If touch or bright lights visibly aggravate the infant, then think about Belladonna.  Belladonna patients often feel better with external pressure, for example massaging the infant’s belly.  However, light touch will likely make them worse (e.g. lightly brushing their abdomen).  Belladonna patients may also have green stools, like Chamomilla, but the crying fits in Belladonna will likely come and go very quickly. 

There are many other remedies to consider though, depending on where the baby holds the tension, whether the gas is coming more out the top or out the bottom, or what kinds of stimuli aggravate them, so don’t be afraid to try others!