Send in the Chamomile: Another Tool In the Colic Wars

Pic­ture Cour­tesy: Time, Inc.

Any­one who has been around a col­icky baby knows how stress­ful it can be, for both the par­ents and the baby. Hav­ing had my own col­icky baby (more than once), I can attest with first hand knowl­edge how HARD it is to see your lit­tle one cry. And more stress­ful to NOT know what will com­fort him. Researchers aren’t even sure what causes colic most think it’s related to stom­ach dis­com­fort or grum­blies in their tum­mies as the Lorax might say.

Colic can be espe­cially stress­ful for a mom after being told by end­less par­ent­ing books that you’ll just know how to answer your baby’s cries & off com­fort for any­thing that ails, which is true to a point. Moms do learn their babies cries over time, it’s not instan­ta­neous. Sim­ply push­ing a baby out of your vagina or hav­ing one air­lifted from your womb via c-section doesn’t embody you with mag­i­cal pow­ers to decode all things baby. It takes time to get to know your baby. A mom isn’t a fail­ure for not being able to do that instan­ta­neously with her baby or to do it with a col­icky baby.

Colic is hard to comfort.

Some­things that can help are: gen­tle rock­ing, music, white noise, nurs­ing, if night wean­ing do it slowly because it’s a big change that can lead to dis­com­fort, if bot­tle feed­ing makesure baby isn’t get­ting a bunch of air while eat­ing, and the use of chamomile tea. Yes, you read the last line right babies tak­ing their own ver­sion of high tea. I was happy to see that the NY Times Health sec­tion actu­ally included it as well.

I know it seems like some­thing some gra­nola lov­ing bare­foot hip­pie momma would offer but research shows that the old wives tale about chamomile tea is true. Cul­tures world­wide use it as a tool to help calm a fussy baby or adult for that mat­ter. Chamomile tea can help reduce dis­com­fort & soothe tummy aches. About 1/2 a cup of the tea, up to 3 times a day. Of course you want to make sure it’s not hot when giv­ing to a baby. Sim­i­lar to giv­ing for­mula you’d want it to be luke­warm. You can do a check by putting a lit­tle bit on your wrist and mak­ing sure the tem­per­a­ture isn’t above luke­warm. If it is let it cool off a lit­tle more. Again like for­mula don’t heat your water in the microwave, it can cause it too heat unevenly. Instead heat it on the stove.

You do want to check to make sure there isn’t a rare chamomile allergy present. It’s not com­mon but it does hap­pen. A sim­ply small skin test can help with this. If skin turns red then do not use because your baby might have an allergy. Also, you can always check with your own doc­tor to make sure it’s OK for your baby (I’m not a med­ical doc­tor & I don’t play one on TV).

I have tried this.

It was a great com­forter to my fussy babies, although I will admit it didn’t work all the time. It was another GOOD tool to have in my momma bag. Hubby found hav­ing more tools at his dis­posal to pull from helped him when he was try­ing to calm colic too, so Papas you can get in the baby calm­ing groove too. Par­ent­ing is an equal oppor­tu­nity employer.

Chamomile tea is also nice to curl up with at the end of the day and curl up I have. Chamomile tea is known to help pro­mote relax­ation, rest­ful sleep, and any left­over bags are good to help reduc­ing inflam­ma­tion of the skin. A great helper for when you are deal­ing with late nights car­ing for a baby.

And in case you are won­der­ing I only eat gra­nola on cer­tain days of week & usu­ally wear shoes (we get a lot of snow).

Any tips/ideas on how to help with colic that worked from your own par­ent­ing tool bag?

Tagged as: chamomile tea, colic