Severe Colic - any ideas or suggestions?

Can anyone help us at all?

We have a little baby girl, Alex who is 7 weeks old this Tuesday. She has been suffering from what would appera to be Colic (as read and digested on many forums). We were advised to try Dr Brown's bottles, we got two at first and found them to be a great help and went out and bought a further 4. Her colic then increased again and by increased I mean...
She seems to feed fine through the day, at somewhere between 9 an d 10pm she takes her feed (5 oz) of C&G premium and is always winded as near as possible after every ounce but all the time she is feeding she is drawing her legs up to her chest, arching her back, crying and generally not happy. This has gone on for weeks now, we have tried her on C&G comfort food and it makes no difference, we were advised by a friend to get a product called Colycynth granules which are placed on the tongue, this seemed to settle her alittle at first and then within two nights she was screaming again in bad pain. We try all positions to wind and comfort her, over the shoulder, on her tummy acroos our knee, sat up (this is the worst position for her, the most pain). We have been going through this now for two weeks where she does not settle at all from between 9 at night and 2.30 in the morning. We have asked the Gp, health visitor and all we get is "it's just colic she will grow out of it" The next person to say that to us is going to get a severe mouthful as it is wearing thin now after watching our Daughter go through hell every night for two weeks and we see no improvement. Can anyone please offer any advice or suggestions? We have also tried gripe water, Infacol and the granules. We have read a little bit on various forums and going to try the Aptamil tomorrow but if anyone else has any ideas they will be most grateful. We are now beginning to think she perhaps has an intolerance to something. We are also taking her to the clinic tomorrow to the baby massage group, hopefully we will pick up some useful exercises there?
Any help or advice will be extremely welcome. Sorry for the war and piece but had to try and cover everything and still I am sure there are other factors I have missed.

Many thanks in advance

Paul, Jackie and Alex

Hi. Sorry to hear your poor baby is suffering so, I know what it feels like. Perhaps Alex is lactose or dairy intolerant? If she was having breast milk I would suggest Mum cuts out dairy (it's not that bad - I am dairy free for my daughter's sake!) but as she is formula fed I think you should change your formula. You can get a soya formula prescribed by your GP but failing that I have seen SMA's Wysoy for sale in Sainsburys. It is more expensive than normal formula and my daughter hated it but she is 13 months old (we have only just been prescribed it) so perhaps Alex will be ok as she is that much younger? Anyway I guess anything is worth a try. My daughter has been colicky all her life (grow out of it? yeah right!) which is why at 11 months old we really had to push our GP that something was wrong and she wasn't just a fussy baby! My daughter had some Aptamil until 5 weeks old when she refused the bottle entirely, she was solely breast fed until starting solids at about 5 months when she got Aptamil in her baby foods. She has always been colicky and gripey and it is only now that she has been diagnosed dairy protein and beef intolerant. I wish I had put 2 and 2 together months ago - it would have saved us all from suffering.

Good luck!

Sharon & Isla

My daughter has been diagnosed as lactose intollerant although i'm not convinced as she didn't display any of the classic signs. However the soya is definately worth a try as for Amber it was a miracle cure. I have discovered though from reading other posts on this site that children with dairy allergy can be allergic to soya too so perhaps speak to doctor first or just offer her a small amount to check. Good luck x

Thank for the advice guys. I have just returned from Tesco's with the Aptamil Easy Digest, we are going to try her on that at the moment. I am sure many of you know that it is no laughing matter to see your little bundle of treasure awake, screaming until early hours before eventually settling down? On Saturday night she screamed in pain until eventually settling at 4.15am and last night it was just after 2.30am. Both of us are absolutely shattered and the problem is Baby is also shattered so she is sleeping a lot during the day. I also think it is somewhat of a vicious circle in the fact that at 9pm ish when she starts with the griping pains she seems to be able to tolerate it better when she is sucking on a bottle, which means she is probably eating too much just for the comfort factor and I think this in turn is making the pains worse as she is then getting bloated or "full" feeling and also having to try and get rid of the excess wind. No fun at all I can tell you.

My understanding is that 50% of children with dairy protein allergy are also allergic to soya protein. I don't think there is any correlation between lactose intolerance and soya allergy but I may be wrong. The symptoms of dairy allergy and lactose intolerance are practically the same however our specialist says that constipation is more likely with dairy allergy and diarrhoea with lactose intolerance. Difficult to know for sure whether a 7 week old has constipation or diarrhoea due to one of the above though! Anyway I hope the Aptamil helps things and you have a better night tonight.

One last thing, have you held Alex in the Tiger in a Tree position (laying on her tummy along your forearm)? My daughter loved that and it did seem to offer her some relief particularly when I rubbed her back at the same time. I hope you have strong arms but we did manage it with me sitting down which wasn't as tiring!

Sharon & Isla

Hi have replied on other post. Baby i think

Hi there just wanted to offer my support - charlie suffered from colic for about 5 weeks, dont have any other suggestions im afraid, coloncynth worked for us. baby massage might be a good idea tho cos they show you how to massage the tummy. hope she improves soon xx