About Colic: Baby's Pain is Real

This week there is new article out that says Infant Colic May Be an Early Migraine. Makes total sense to me, a CranioSacral-based birth trauma and attachment therapist! 
 
"Nobody knows what causes colic, although people have looked at gastrointestinal pathology for clues. However, it is unlikely that colic is caused by intestinal gas."

In a paper presented by Pauline Anderson on June 27, 2014 at American Headache Society (AHS) 56th Annual Scientific Meeting. 

So, what IS colic? A migraine? And, how to help? That is the pseudo quandary. I wrote about the causes ten years ago. Infant colic and infant migraine IS a result of obstetric medicine and the mishandling of the human baby's head, neck, and shoulders; and, that is a result of lack of understanding and valuing of human birth and due to the unnecessary interventions in labor.  Finally, someone in another field of research is whispering it. 

Still, ten years after I wrote the following article, and after helping countless women to Heal Your Baby, "It appears that the association between infant colic and migraine is quite robust," but we just don't know why.  

And obstetric medicine doesn't want to know, not really.  Doesn't want you to know, for sure. They don't want to stop what they - trained professionals who do NOT have to follow evidenced-based medicine - are doing. Every day. Every birth in this country, that gives us the poorest mortality rating of all industrialized nations.   

And, what about all these babies who have been put on pharmaceuticals for gastro issues? What about their long term gut health? And ongoing headaches? Their mental health and relationships with mother and father? While they - the medical and insurance establishments - don't want to nor have to support, fund, or refer babies to a leading edge therapy that works. And worse, birth attendants don't have to stop doing what causes the damage. 

From my old website, 2004:

If you are reading this page in your search of help for your crying, colicky baby, you have probably already read enough to know that current information regarding colic is grim. Estimates are that twenty to 30% of newborns are diagnosed with colic. And, yet, there is not a medical consensus on what it is, what causes it, and what to do for a newborn who is “diagnosed” with colic. There are a couple of theories about the possible causes, such as a nervous system immaturity and an over sensitivity to external stimuli, and another that it is caused by gastrointestinal issues. Most suggested remedies fall within those two categories.

This article covers these topics:

• The experts in medicine don’t know what causes colic and how to treat it. 
• Babies do not outgrow colic symptom and colic doesn’t go away. 
• Birth experiences are what babies are communicating.
• How babies communicate the story of their birth
• Colic crying and symptoms contribute to the cycle of postpartum depression in mother, parental conflicts, and colic in babies.
• Birth trauma is now known in pre- and perinatal trauma healing to contribute to causing colic.
• How the experience of birth trauma can create emotional and physical restrictions that contribute to colic.
• Why it is not true that colic symptoms suddenly "appear and disappear" and the lifelong effect of not treating 

The experts in medicine don’t know what causes colic and how to treat it. 
 

In spite of evidence and experience that most remedies don’t work the web is full of sites selling a multitude of devices to assist with colic symptoms. Many work on the same ideas as the traditional ideas — holding positions, swaddling, ideas about mother’s diet, formula versus breast milk, taking baby for car rides, running vacuums, and placing babies on running washing machines are some of the suggestions. None are shown to be effective. A parent might find something that brings temporary relief, but rarely does it heal or eliminate the symptoms. Scientific research and anecdotal information from parents indicates that most of these and prescribed drugs don’t work at all.

 

Desperate parents are assured by medical professionals with information that is contradictory, patronizing, or nonsensical. For example, a pediatric researcher at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle says, "A few remedies look promising, but there's really no evidence that colic needs to be treated anyway." 

Nonetheless, physicians and parents typically rely on medical treatment for infant colic including drug therapy and formula changes.  She suggests in an interview with WebMD.com, "It's OK to just wait it out,” (EASY FOR HER, RIGHT?) “but you might want to try soy or hypoallergenic formula, herbal tea, and a less stimulating environment." In the July issue of Pediatrics journal she also reports many remedies such as drug therapy and eliminating dairy, were ineffective for the problem. 

 

So, do you know any more now than you did? Your baby is still suffering, so are you, and your pediatrician is probably just as frustrated and baffled.

 

Most medical experts and writers suggest to just wait it out since “colic will just disappear as mysteriously as it appeared.” And, yet, information from parents would indicate otherwise. And, doesn’t the quote above, "A baby's cry is precisely as serious as it sounds," make more sense to a reasonable person or to someone who has been up night after night with a sweet, new baby who is obviously in such emotional and physical pain? Why doesn’t it make sense to the medical community who know that pain and dysfunction have a cause?

 

I found only one physician, Robert W. Steele, M.D., a pediatrician who writes for www.parentsplace.com, who dispelled the two conventional thoughts that colic is caused by either the immature nervous system or that it is a gastrointestinal issue, such as gas from air intake, formula, or mother’s diet. Dr. Steele is the only physician to identify baby’s crying as communication, which is consistent with pre- and perinatal psychology and birth trauma healing. He is the only one I found who did not blame the mother’s milk, diet, temperament, stress, or to deny the cries as having a real cause. He said, “The third school of thought is one that characterizes the child's crying as her way of communicating. When she begins to cry, she is trying to tell you she is in need of something. When that need is not met, she becomes inconsolable which hampers the ability to meet that need, and the whole thing becomes a vicious cycle.” (Dr. Steele is a board certified pediatrician at St. John's Regional Health Center in Springfield, Missouri.)

 

Colic is often attributed to "gas" in a newborn. Dr. Robert Lee on Ivillage.com, Treating a Baby with Colic said, “but remember that after 20–30 minutes of colic* – going red in the face, drawing legs up, clenching fists, refusing to be comforted, passing a lot of wind and having tummy rumbles — it can seem as if they have a temperature, when actually they haven’t.” Sure, after twenty to 30 minutes of screaming and gasping for air who wouldn’t be gassy? It makes me think of the horrid gas pains I would have as a teenager after jumping up and down in the bleachers and screaming and cheering for my Iowa high school’s championship girl’s basketball team. 

 

Dr. Steele’s is the only reference I found (consistent with Prenatal and Birth Therapy) that taking in so much air at the onset of a crying spell (caused by emotions) contributes to a full-on cycle of painful gas and uncontrollable crying leading to COLIC.

 

At least one other physician in my Internet search is at least asking the right question. A quote from WebMD.com says, “Your baby cries every afternoon for hours at a time, and the crying has worn you down to the point where you feel like joining in. What could be upsetting your child?” (emphasis is mine.)

 

Unfortunately, the question, “what could be upsetting your child?” goes unanswered as the doctor continued, “When a healthy baby cries like this, chances are that he has colic. Colic is not a physical disorder or disease. Doctors define colic as 3 or more hours a day of continued crying. The crying is not due to hunger, a wet diaper, or other visible causes, and the child cannot be calmed down. Colic usually goes away by 3 months of age.” 

 

Babies do not outgrow colic symptom and colic doesn’t go away.
 

Often I read that medical experts don’t know what causes colic or there is no way to treat it…and so, thank GOODNESS, it just goes away in a few months. If it’s true that babies outgrow colic, as we are told by the medical community, why do we have excessive commercials on television for prescription and non-prescription remedies for adult acid reflux and gas? Adults with acid reflux, ulcers, gallbladder, anxiety, or head and neck pain have had years of “reinforcing traumas.” If children outgrow colic, why are more children than ever before now being prescribed these medications for reflux, ulcers, and other gastrointestinal issues? It is crucial to resolve the birth experience in the early days and months of the baby’s life. 

 

While the experts in the medical field continue to tell parents that there is no cause or remedy and that it “just disappears,” thirty years of research and clinical practice in the pre- and perinatal field tells us that it is birth trauma that is a primary cause of crying and colic and that it does not go away. Irritable stomach and colon, repeatedly and consistently spitting up, and vomiting for unexplained reasons are symptoms of emotional and physical trauma. Whether one is four hours, four days, or forty years old and having crying spells (and acid reflux, indigestion, etc.) at the same time of day, it is a symptom of a trauma response. 

Birth experiences are what babies are communicating.

 

Interestingly, I did not find any information in an Internet search about colic that discusses birth trauma contributing to colic. The possibility of trauma, particularly birth trauma, associated with medical interventions was not discussed; and so, of course, neither was it discussed that there are the long term psychological, physical, and emotional consequences of birth trauma. Rarely, is the cause of colic associated with the impact and effect of drug induced labor, epidural birth, of the trauma of birthing in supine positions, and the rough handling of babies’ heads addressed (even more traumatic when scalp monitors, forceps, or vacuum extractors are used). These medically induced traumas are known in pre- and perinatal psychology and trauma healing fields to contribute to, if not cause, the physical, emotional, and psychological responses of babies. This is WHY they cry. Babies are telling their stories. Young children, teens, and adults will continue to “tell their stories” through their emotional, psychological, and psychological “dysfunctions.” Again, as Jean Liedloff says, "A baby's cry is precisely as serious as it sounds."

 

(Prenatal experiences are known in pre- and perinatal psychology to contribute to the experience of birth and this discussed in detail elsewhere on this site.) 

How babies communicate the story of their birth
 

A crying newborn or infant (who is dry, fed, and continues to cry with deep emotion) is telling his or her story of the emotional and physical reactions and memories of birth. When a baby cries for a time and it extends to hours and with much emotion, it leads to colic symptoms. Watch your baby’s gestures, postures, and listen to him or her for the emotional feeling. While you are comforting and talking with your baby, check in with yourself about what you’re talking about, feeling, or responding. Could your baby have something to say about this as well? If a baby seems angry, sad, furious, scared, or frustrated to you, trust your own feelings and seek help to understand and heal your baby. 

 

Your baby is communicating with you with her body. Watch for arching back, tilting and holding head to one side only. Does the baby have a favorite position? Is the spine curved the same way and head facing in one direction? Is she unable to lay on her back, or she cries when moved from a favorite position? Is she comforted when in a certain position, even though it looks uncomfortable? Does she move or gesture with one leg, hand, or arm more or is one more limited? Does she prefer to be on or to look to one side? These postures will persist for a lifetime if unresolved and do contribute to adult postural and intestinal issues. Is his head sensitive to touch or does he resist having a shirt pulled over his head? His cries are communicating to you the “what” and the “why.” Parents and professionals need to ask themselves, “what could my baby be telling me, where does this comes from?”  

Colic crying and symptoms contribute to the cycle of postpartum depression in mother, parental conflicts, and colic in babies.

Prenatal and Birth Therapy supports a parent to hear, to be with their angry, grieving infant and to differentiate their own wounding, feeling, and stresses from that of their infant’s. The result is a healing of the relationship and the facilitation of attachment and bonding. When parents are supported to support their infant’s experience and to work through their own early wounding, amazing family healing occurs.

 

Conventional advice usually assures parents that colic is not their fault (with no mention of the impact of medical interventions on labor and birth) and that the baby will outgrow the symptoms. Unfortunately, however, while assuring mothers that it’s not her fault the explanations often are blaming. Not having answers causes professionals to give ineffective to down right damaging advice. For example, one Ph.D. professional in a colic center is quoted on WebMD.com as saying, “getting to the point—where you can say, ‘Hey, my child has a problem, it’s not me’—even admitting that your baby is a pain in the neck—is very freeing and very healthy.” Freeing? Healthy? Since when? New or old moms do not feel free or healthy thinking such thoughts about their little ones. This just contributes to a mother's feelings of failure and inadequacy and contributes to depression.

 

The literature in the pre- and perinatal psychology and birth trauma healing clearly show the detriment of this perspective. It does not acknowledge the level of emotional trauma and angst causing colic crying and it does not acknowledge the truth in the statement itself. The language used is so telling…“pain in the neck.” But who has the pain in the neck? The baby, the parents, or both? The consequence of parents not recognizing the very real pain of the infant is that parents and babies end up alienated and miserable. Relationship patterns are developed that will persist for a lifetime if not resolved, (Somebody in this story most likely has or still is a pain in the neck) and this is why it is crucial for resolving colic in the early months.

 

In Prenatal and Birth Therapy it is known that “what parents don’t deal with in their own life and in the parental relationship, the BABY will take it on and express it.”  It is difficult for a new parent to watch and hear their newborn who is expressing their anger and grief from prenatal and birth trauma. Babies’ birth experiences reflect aspects of the parents’ births. Often, in sessions, the trauma can be traced back multiple generations. It is likely that when a baby shows the symptoms of trauma that this also contributes to post-partum depression for the mother. Often the parents are feeling the depth of their own roots of their emotions of fear, anger, powerlessness, etc. A parent might feel the need to avoid their own feelings and will not be able to be present with their infant. When mothers and fathers are unable to recognize and differentiate their own feelings, and their baby’s feelings, they are unable to empathize with the baby’s birth experience. The consequence is that the child feels unheard and unsupported. Parent and infant bonding is further impaired and a lack of trust deepens. Dr. Castellino suggests these are contributing factors to the high divorce rate.

 

The typical response of adults to colic (trauma) crying by an infant is to bounce the baby and roughly pat the baby’s back to console them; to stick a breast, pacifier, or bottle in the baby’s mouth; and to tell them, “You’re okay, it’s okay.” These responses can exacerbate the emotions of the baby, because the baby is not being heard nor is she being validated about her experience. As adults we know it doesn’t feel good to be told, “it’s okay, it’s okay” when we know it isn’t, or to be patted on the back and told to get over it, or to have someone offer us a beer or piece a cake and be quiet.

 

Someone acknowledging the emotion and situation from a non-judgmental and empathic perspective is often enough to help one to move on. Otherwise, we feel unheard and eventually we stop trying to share our story when others are not able to sit with us in the painful place we are feeling. As an infant, emotional support is often substituted with the breast, bottles, pacifiers, or the baby is left to “cry it out”. This teaches the infant to stuff her feelings and use things outside herself for comfort.  By adulthood comfort is found in addictions with food, alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, relationships, sex, porn, gambling, shopping, over working, etc.

 

Prenatal and Birth Therapy supports a parent to hear, to be with their angry, grieving infant, and to differentiate their own wounding from that of their infant’s. The result is a healing of the relationship and the facilitation of attachment and bonding. When parents are supported to support their infant’s experience and to work through their own early wounding, amazing family healing occurs. 

Birth trauma is now known in pre- and perinatal trauma healing to contribute to causing colic. 

Traditional medicine tells us that there is nothing to cause or cure colic and the symptoms will just go away. Osteopathic, chiropractic, and pre- and perinatal psychology and birth trauma therapy tell us otherwise. Crying babies are telling their stories of these experiences of birth. It is often at particular times, such as when life experiences trigger the memory of the experience, when the baby’s body is in a certain position, or when touched on the head or other parts of the body. We believe it corresponds to the point in the five stage sequence of birth. These are where outside forces disrupted the baby's process. Building potency for action through anger, frustration, or fear is an imprint from the birth experience that becomes a part of every activity encountered. This can be seen in the behavior of young toddlers, children, and adults long after colic and crying symptoms have subsided. Because it is imprinted on the central nervous system a human will continue to re-experience these emotions and imprints throughout life. (See the work of Castellino and Emerson for more on the effects of prenatal and birth shock and trauma.)

 

Birth is not a painless process for a baby, EVEN when the mother has epidural anesthesia. When a baby is born, she or he experiences enormous pressures as he enters the birth canal, rotating from back to front, and finally emerging with the back of his head first. Forty to 50 pounds of pressure are exerted on the infant's neck during the birth process. It is quite damaging when an outside force (hands or vacuum) force a baby to go in a direction different from their impulse. The sutures, or joints, in his skull are still flexible, and can slide over each other to accommodate the compression from the contractions of the uterus. These changes can persist after birth — not everything springs back immediately — sometimes leaving the baby uncomfortable and in pain. Nerves within the skull can be compressed. This can lead to a myriad of symptoms with hearing visual, olfactory, asthma, sensory processing, etc.

 

The ease and progress of a baby’s journey through the pelvis depends on many factors — the baby’s size and position, the mother’s emotional and physical status, the size and shape of her pelvis and previous traumas to her pelvis, her body position at birth, etc.  The baby's head leads the way, while his or her feet engage with the fundus of the mother’s uterus (drugs interfere with this biologically necessary process). Powerful contractions squeeze the baby’s head against the cervix. This stress, combined with the weight of the baby's head, is made worse when mother is supine (on her back) for birth. This position puts considerable pressure on the neck, spine, nerves and muscles of both mother and baby. They are no longer able to work together efficiently.

 

Supine position at birth is the most common in the United States and it is the most inefficient way for a woman to birth her baby. This position contributes to the increased need for interventions, and it contributes significantly to birth trauma. Many women are choosing to follow their body’s impulse and the need to be in an upright, squatting, or kneeling position during labor, but then at birth willingly or are forced (by medical people) to do birth in the supine position.  On physical, emotional, and psychological levels this is traumatizing to the baby and to the mother/child and to their relationship. Pre- and perinatal psychology and birth trauma healing fields show us this is one of the earliest imprints for dysfunctions between mother and child and that it contributes to many issues seen in our society. The reason often given to women for being forced (“forcibly encouraged with false information”) to be in this position, even when “allowed” to labor as they wished, is that the supine position is best position for the doctor to be able to “deliver the baby.” It’s not. It’s best only for the physician and nursing staff. Period. If physicians weren't inappropriately held responsible for the outcome of birth, it wouldn't be so important to them.

 

Nocturnal crying is often related to cranium trauma such as in birth by c-section or other situations where the baby labors without progression, where the baby births too quickly, and/or when the baby’s head and neck are mishandled or over extended at birth as in vacuum extraction and forceps delivery. Lack of progression is often a place where a prenate has become stuck in the mother’s pelvis and experienced fear and anxiety while the head has continued to push against the un-opening cervix and bony structures of the mother. This causes physical symptoms that continue through life as the body and mind compensate. For example, most adults come to massage and chiropractic sessions for relief of neck, shoulder, and back pain. In the study of prenatal and birth trauma these are known to be rooted in the physical and emotional experience of birth. 

How the experience of birth trauma can create emotional and physical restrictions that contribute to colic

The fields of osteopathic and chiropractic medicine contribute to understanding the impact of birth on the skull and nervous system and the potential lifelong physical systemic consequences. We know from the osteopaths and chiropractors that the physical symptoms shift over life as the body compensates. Pre- and perinatal psychology, brain research, and trauma healing research contribute to understanding how birth trauma causes lifelong emotional, psychological, and spiritual consequences. Physical restrictions from the birth process that contribute to crying and colic are a result of the baby’s head articulating with (ramming against when there is Pitocin inducement or when the membranes have been ruptured prematurely) the mother’s bony pelvis. A common impact site that contributes to both colic and ADD/ADHD is the side of the baby’s head where it has had to drag up over the sacral bone of the mother when she birthed in a lying down position. Click here to read of one family’s story. These restrictions are much more significant when Pitocin and epidural anesthesia was used.

 

The other major restriction that causes colic is at the atlas and occipital joint where the spinal cord meets the skull. This is where cranial nerves pass through. At birth, the mishandling of the head results in over-extension of this joint and the nerves are impacted. The nerves are restricted by pressure until or unless it is resolved. The Vagus cranial nerve innervates the entire intestinal system and so when the head is mishandled, the resulting restrictions impede the nerve. The restriction does not allow for proper nerve activity to supply the intestinal system. This restriction is easily resolved with CranioSacral, chiropractic, or cranial osteopathic therapy; however, what is crucial for the baby’s full development is the emotional and psychological healing accomplished by Prenatal and Birth Therapy.

 

Miriam Mills, M.D., a pediatrician in Tulsa, OK, has completed a five-year study of the use of cranial manipulation as an alternative to medication and surgery to treat colic and chronic ear infections. Her results are published in the Archives Pediatric, September, 2003. 

Why it is not true that colic symptoms suddenly “appear and disappear” and the lifelong effect of not treating

Now that you have a new perspective on colic, you will likely agree it doesn’t just go away. Why do SOME babies stop crying and being colicky?  So, what happens if it is untreated and if the symptoms do seem to stop? Ask parents of a baby who was colicky, whether the symptoms went away or not, if that baby or child is now a peaceful, self-motivated, self-regulating child. Most likely they will describe their child as difficult, easily frustrated, easily distracted, unable to follow through on requests and tasks…see where we are going? Attention deficit disorders are common among children who were colicky as babies. Babies who resolve their emotional and physical traumas often make immediate and sustained improvement in the first session. Issues of childhood that become lifelong issues can be prevented by acknowledging the impact of birth on a baby and by resolving the emotional, physical, and psychological, and spiritual issues early.

  

The medical profession and others tell parents that colic goes away…as mysteriously as it came on. It is not true that colic goes away. Babies naturally complete the process of “coming fully into their body” between the second and third months of life. When a baby has experienced trauma and/or had drugs during birth this process of coming into the body is more acutely experienced. As a baby is coming into her body when there were traumatic birth experiences and drugs, she is in real physical and emotional pain in the present moment. In other words, a “colicky baby” is working very hard to be present in his or her body in spite of the drug imprints and experiences. 

 

The symptoms SOMETIMES ease up when an infant is three to 5 months. Often, this is not true. Either way, this is the time an infant becomes more mobile and begins attending to certain developmental tasks. The human body and mind has an amazing, self-preserving mechanism and compensates for traumatic experiences and injuries. And babies will develop alternative ways to accomplish tasks. The frustration and anxiety will be seen in how they do this. The trauma pattern/memory is still there, and as the child grows to adulthood these compensations in the body become structural issues (such as chronic back and neck pain).

 

The physician writer above who asked the question “what could be upsetting your baby so,” went on to say later that, “Some doctors think that colic is due to the baby's own temperament. Some babies just take a little bit longer to get adjusted to the world or a day and night cycle. This is perfectly normal, and the colic will eventually go away.”  Once one sees the impact of birth trauma one can realize that colic is much more than “baby’s own temperament.” Rather, we can know the significance of birth trauma and the first few months of life as crucial to the developing baby’s temperament. Developmental tasks coincide with the child learning that he or she is not going to be heard by her parents. Meanwhile, she or he has been integrating the birth and post-natal activities and these become ways of being and, on some level, lifelong survival skills. As the baby turns his or her attention elsewhere to play and interacting, the same frustration, anxiety, fear, anger expressed in the newborn to infant stage can be seen in interactions with parents and others and in how she or he approaches new life tasks. 

 

On a physical level the trauma remains unresolved and throughout life begins to manifest in other physical ways.  Ear infections, ADD/ADHD and other learning difficulties, throat infections, sensory integrations issues, biting, tantrums, levels of aggression, headaches, migraines are all thought to be symptoms of pre- and perinatal birth trauma. The crying and the symptoms of colic do not go away.   

 

As I begin to transition from this discussion of colic to inducing labor and the use of epidural anesthesia, I repeat that colic and crying symptoms are most likely a result of birth trauma. This is particularly true if the mother received drugs for pain, if she was in the supine position for birth, and when the baby experiences rough handling by medical staff.

 

The mainstream scientific literature is quite clear that the drugs given in labor and birth cross the placenta and affect the baby. Obstetrics books in the 1940’s advised strongly against the use of drugs and outlined the consequences to the baby and mother. Obstetrics and women since then have ignored this as pain avoidance has become the primary concern. Preand peri-natal trauma healing now show us how babies experience long-term effects of the drugs at birth and the lifelong consequences.

 

An example of an unmedicated birth with medical interventions

A woman whose birth I attended recently was told by a nurse that she was one of only five percent of women in that hospital to give birth without drugs. Babies born without drugs are fully awake and alert, their bodies stronger from the first day. Drugs are not the only issue. This mother of this same baby born without drugs, was forced to move from the kneeling position at the crowning to wait fifteen minutes for the doctor to arrive. The baby has shown us the position he was in, the restrictions in the mastoid, temporal, occipital, atlas bones. Within days of his birth he had the symptoms of colic and cried and cried, telling his story with his voice and body. The mother’s legs and pelvis had trauma from having her legs pushed forcibly towards her chest after “allowed” to proceed with the birth. The baby has shown how this position and the speed at which mother and baby were forced to adhere to, actually impeded his progress. At a point where the mother begged to rest a moment is the point where the baby showed us his shoulder was impeded. I have seen this many times with babies. Left unresolved, these traumas contribute to complications in future births.