What helped during the colic stage?

[Hollyadmin]

What kinds of things did you find helpful when your baby was going through that non-stop, incessant crying/screaming stage? What things actually helped (even a bit) to calm them?

Here were ours:

• Harvey Karp's techniques
• Carrying him in the sling
• Sucking - soother or on our finger
• Being outside and in constant motion
• Car rides (sometimes - a lot of the time, he'd keep right on screaming
• Warm bath - every night he got a bath...and that was the ONLY time during the day when he was calm and quiet.  Once we even asked my parents to come watch us bathe him, because they hadn't yet seen him calm and quiet!
  

I know it's cliche, but really, the most helpful things we did were self-care...things we did to help ourselves not lose our minds!

[sheeshoo2]

WATER!  Baths were great (we used the Prince Lionheart WashPOD which is awesome as it keeps the child warm), but sometimes when Cole was screaming for hours at a time I would just bring him over by the sink and run warm water over his feet...he ALWAYS stopped at least while the water was on.  Sometimes I could lay him on his back in the bathroom next to the tub and turn the water on and even just the sound of it would quiet him.  We definitely have a water freak on our hands though...he is in swimming lessons right now and while in the water he is the happiest in the class!

[civano]

Being swaddled, both of my kids really needed to be swaddled and past the normal age of swaddling too.

Baths really helped DS1 with his fussiness and wind down at night to get ready for bed.

**Oh and edited to add...I do not think we could have lived without our white noise machine to help our children sleep better. It really did and still does wonders for DS1.**

[simplyrose]

Chiropractic care worked wonders for our little guy. I would highly recommend this to any struggling parent with a colic baby. We have had 5 adjustments now and the colic has completely subsided. Now we are dealing with his sleep routine or lack thereof which is an entirely different story.

I would recommend finding a chiropractor that specializes in babies/young children. Sometimes I have heard the change can be really dramatic or often it takes some time for the body to adjust. Our chiropractor found 3 subluxations in our son's spine and has been working on them bit by bit. He found an issue right around his digestive area and worked on that first - we are no longer experiencing the typical colic symptoms of uncontrollable crying, flailing legs, rock-hard belly, the evening grumpiness, the poop that wouldn't come for days and day and when it did - look out, explosive. It has been a really great experience.