Can I prevent colic?
Mike and Laurie were the parents of a previously colicky baby, who then grew up in a gay and calm two-year-old. In anticipation of their second child, they came to a prenatal consultation and started with the question: "Is there something we can do to increase our chances of having a calmer child?"We do not want to go through this anymore. "
Experiment to prevent colic
I told these parents that although there is no magic remedy for preventing colic, there are ways to lower your chances of having a baby with colic. For three years, we conducted an experiment in our office to prevent colic. That's what we recommended and what results were observed.
Aspire to a serene pregnancy. Although a pregnancy without anxiety is as rare as a child who never cries, studies have shown that mothers, whose pregnancies are accompanied by greater stress without permission, are more likely to give birth to a child who will suffer from colic.
friend.
Do not shake the child
A painful cry not only pierces the tender heart;it can also cause bitterness. If the crying of a child that is getting louder and more insufferable, you get it, take it to another person or put it in a safe place and leave the room until your terrible motives disappear. If you frenziedly shake the child, it can damage his fragile brain, which can have fatal consequences.
Try to go through pregnancy and childbirth without medication. Studies have shown that mothers who were given epidural anesthesia during labor were more likely to have colic than children who passed through labor without the use of pharmaceuticals. In addition, mothers, who during pregnancy were taking drugs that caused addiction, or drank a lot, more restless children were born.
Stick to the five concepts of attachment. We found that out of all these concepts, the most effective means of preventing crying is to carry the baby in a bag. Each pair, participating in our experiment, left the maternity home with a baby sling bag and received short instructions from our staff for wearing the baby. Not only his mother, but also his father was taught to carry the child for most of the day.
Identify the "candidate colic club" as early as possible and take action. Some children give themselves out on the first or second day after they are born. They demonstrate several sparks, which warn that the real fire is not far off.
When I was in charge of the neonatal department at the university hospital, I was horrified at how screaming some newborns were. I opened the door of the children's room and heard
one of these piercing screams, after which I immediately had a desire to close the door and run away. Children crying - that's what I'm really suffering. Therefore, I not only studied the sound characteristics of crying, but also wondered if we could identify children with exceptionally unpleasant crying in the children's room and make their cries softer, calmer for the first three to four weeks. Some children have good manners and begin with a crying affection that, if paid in time, does not turn into an unpleasant, defiant rejection. Others begin immediately with a shrill squeal, causing everyone within earshot the desire to run away from the child. Such a cry sometimes causes irritation instead of gentle feelings for the child. Nurses in the children's ward immediately identify such children, about whom they usually say: "This is not a problem you'll take care of."Most of these "plaks" that I had to face, wearing in a bag at the very beginning of the newborn period not only reduces the frequency of crying, but also softens the very nature of crying, making it more pleasant by ear and causing affection. Here is one example that took place in real life at the time of writing this book.
Jeffrey, the second child of a very attached and devoted mother,
was born after a long and painful birth. Jeffrey's cry caught his breath. Even in the delivery room his cry almost cleared the premises of all the medical personnel. Nurses in the nursery( then in the hospital was not allowed the mother's joint stay with the child) could not stand Jeffrey's cry and quickly took him to the ward to the mother. Susan, Jeffrey's mother, endured this crying more easily, but even she admitted that he was interfering with the establishment of a warm relationship between them. As an experiment, I advised parents to wear Jeffrey in a sling-he bag for at least four hours every day or more, if possible. They were also asked to record their child's crying on the audio cassette for two weeks. A week later Jeffrey's crying became much softer, which allowed the mother "to finally enjoy staying with him;now he cries much more pleasantly. "Susan and her husband created a caring environment in which Jeffrey did not need to be angry and, accordingly, there was no need to scream angrily.
Help loving care
Traditionally, medical workers advise parents to carry a child in a children's bag and use other techniques to ensure the child's comfort after addition,
as a child began to behave nervously or had colic started. Yes, and I did. But then I realized how important preventive medicine is for colic. A few years ago, I began to recommend that parents carry a child on themselves immediately after birth, especially those children who have already received labels "fussy" or "restless" in the children's ward of the hospital. As I expected, the number of bouts of sudden pain and restless children in my practice was drastically reduced.
I noticed, and this was confirmed by studies that parents, whose care is based on affection, are less likely to have nervous children. However, I also noted that even those parents who apply all the principles of loving care can be awarded a baby with colic. Even those children whom I call "right from the beginning" sometimes suffer from colic.(But these children should be suspected of some kind of disease.) There is something fundamentally frightening in that you can not calm a crying child. But parents who base their caring for a child on attachment are more able to cope with colic, they are more likely to seek out the true cause of discomfort in a child, and in general they are more sensitive to the crying of a child. In these families, even if they can not cure colic, crying attacks do not lead to a distance between the parents and the child - instead they use this temporary test simply as another factor cementing the already strong contact between the parents and the child.
It seemed to me very curious that colic usually begins no earlier than two weeks after the birth of the baby. Could it be that the child gives us a two-week probation period during which he assesses whether we can help him to establish the functioning of all his systems and adapt to life outside the womb? If his expectations for a certain level of parental care are not justified, his body goes from the neotlennogo state to the disordered state, the state of failure, which leads to a complete disorder of behavior, which we call colic.
Even if the cause of colic in a child is a disease, rather than a cause related to behavior, parents who wear their children are able to better cope with seizures. The closeness they achieve gives these parents a sensitivity, making them especially responsive to their child's needs. Parents who wear their children also learn to foresee that it will become a triggering mechanism of colic attacks, and avoid it.
Wearing a baby in a bag is especially valuable to prevent evening colic. It may be that the child spent most of his day trying to compensate for the missing and adapt to his environment, using his own not quite successful techniques of complacency. By the end of the day, he is so exhausted from these attempts to adjust himself, that frustrated and desperate from hysteria. If a child is worn during the day, it fills in the missing and helps the child organize the day, thereby preventing the evening colic. The tension that would accumulate during the day and from which you would need to be released in the evening through an attack of unrestrained behavior, no, since the bag fulfilled its role - helped the child feel comfortable.