Resources for Parents of Colicky Babies

After writing yesterday’s post, it occurred to me that someone may stumble across this blog because they put the word Colic in google. I wanted to share some of the things that helped me when we were going through the worst of it.

The most helpful book to me was Dr. Weissbluth’s Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. He doesn’t offer any simple solutions to the problem, but he goes into great length discussing action plans according to the different resources that parents have. I really appreciated that since it makes a big difference as to how you are going to respond. Also, he reassured us that we hadn’t done anything to cause our child’s colic, which was important to me after a couple people had implied that our son was fussy because we had spoiled him. That being said, the book is pretty boring and in desperate need of a good editor. It is very repetitive and sometimes contradictory, but if you can parse through the information, its really helpful.

Another great resource was the DVD The Happiest Baby on the Block by Harvey Karp. I recommend the DVD instead of the book because you can actually see how to swaddle and do the giggling motion he speaks so much of. There is also a womb like noise in the special features section. It’s a horrible sound, kind of like being in an airport and an industrial construction site at the same time, but my son loved it.

I have a pretty conflicted relationship with attachment parenting right now, but many of the practices such as child wearing and co-sleeping were really useful when our baby was at his worst, so I recommend the Dr. Sears’ The Fussy Baby Book. My understanding is that everything in this book is also in his Baby Book so you may just want to check that out instead.