Crying Babies : County Osteopaths : Cranial Osteopathic Clinic : Joanna Young, Lynette Topham & Jonathan Mussen : Osteopath Worcester, Malvern, Birmingham, Droitwich, Pershore, Bromsgrove, Evesham, Tewkesbury, Kidderminster, Redditch, Halesowen, Stourbridge

A hungry baby will cry all the time, so how can you be sure your baby is getting enough food? Regular weighing should answer this question. It will show whether or not they are putting on weight at the expected rate for them. This rate is worked out by plotting their weight on a growth chart week after week and, although each child may be on a different arc on the chart (these arcs are called centiles) good growth for each child is when they stay on their centile as time goes by. It is acceptable for a baby to lose a little weight in their first week but after that weight gain should be steady. If you are at all worried ask your Health Visitor to come and weigh your baby or go to your local Health Visitors Drop-In Clinic to get them weighed. If weight gain is good then you can be assured that they are getting enough food and hunger is not the cause of your baby's crying. However, if weight gain is not as it should be, consider these options:

Bottle-fed Babies

Bottle-fed babies may haved a Dairy Intolerance and therefore find it difficult to digest the formula they are on. All standard formulas contain Dairy. See our section on Dairy Intolerance for more information.

Sometimes, bottle-fed babies seem not to be able to drink the amount recommended for their age. It may be because tension left by difficulties in birth or pregnancy have caused physical tension around their stomach that registers as “fullness”. This is easily by Cranial Osteopathic treatment.

Breast-fed Babies

Breast-fed babies can be weighed before and after a feed to see how much they drink during a feed (you need especially accurate scales for this so go to your local Health Visitor’s drop-in clinic). If your baby is not getting enough and you want to continue breast feeding, get advice from the Breast Feeding Support Councilor at your local hospital, join a Breast Feeding Support Group or see your the local NCT Breast Feeding Advisor. It may be that the baby is not latching on correctly and therefore not stimulating the "let down" of milk. On the other hand, some woman produce more milk than others and this means that some mum's may need to supplement their breast feeds with formula feeds to ensure that their baby gets enough.

Breast-fed babies can suffer from intolerances too. Any thing their mum eats passes through to them in their milk. So to cure an intolerance in a breast-fed baby the mum will have to cut the suspected foods or drinks out of her diet. Food intolerances run in the family so you will probably know instinctively what to cut out. It could be anything but dairy and wheat are the commonest foods to cause intolerance. If in doubt get yourself or your baby tested. See Dairy Intolerance for further information.

The “good bacteria” that are in “Yakult” type yoghurt drinks are needed in babies’ guts too but you cannot give these drinks to babies. You can, however, buy probiotics specially designed for babies. Biocare do one, contact them on tel: 0121 433 3727. Probiotics, as these bacteria are called, live in our guts and help us digest our food. Babies have no bacteria in their gut at birth but should soon develop them. However, if their mum has a tendency to have Candida overgrowth, symptoms of which may be recurrent Thrush and/or digestion problems, then they may benefit from probiotics to help prevent Candida overgrowth in their own bodies. A symptoms of Candida overgrowth in babies may be Oral Thrush.

*WHEN YOU TRY ANY REMEDIES AT HOME REMEMBER TO INTRODUCE EACH NEW THING ONE AT A TIME AND THEN TO WAIT AT LEAST 48 HOURS (BUT LONGER IF POSSIBLE) TO SEE WHAT EFFECTS THE CHANGE IS HAVING BEFORE DECIDING IF IT HAS BEEN USEFUL OR NOT.

All views expressed here and advice given is the personal opinion of the author based on years of experience treating babies, children and adults with Cranial Osteopathy and raising children of her own.

What is Dairy Intolerance? How can you tell if you or your child has it and what foods must be avoided if so?

All babies cry but if your baby cries excessively you will instinctively know this and recognise that there is something out of the ordinary upsetting them.

Cranial Osteopathy has a great track record when it comes to solving the causes of excessive crying in babies. Here are some of the common fractious baby scenarios that we treat with great success. Not all the problems that cause babies to cry require professional help. At the bottom of the page are remedies you can try at home.

Babies cry when they are tired, and an overtired baby can scream for Britain. But how do you know if it is tiredness that is making them cry? Key clues are yawning and staring off into space. But for a detailed look at reasons for problems with sleeping please see the FAQ entilted Sleep Difficulties in Bables and Children. If your baby has real difficulty getting to sleep or staying asleep it may be that a niggling discomfort from a difficult gestation or birth may be preventing them from relaxing deeply enough to get off to sleep or staying relaxed for long enough to go through the natural sleep cyle without waking up. These are the cases where Cranial Osteopathic treatment works wonders*.

If you suspect your baby is lactose intolerant and do not want to or cannot remove lactose from their diet Colief* may help. Colief is available off the shelf in the baby section at the Chemist and all major supermarkets. It contains lactase enzyme, the enzyme which digests lactose in our guts. When given to a child who cannot digest lactose the lactase in Colief does the job for the child and any crying from indigestion should reduce noticeably. In my experience it can be fiddly to administer as it has to be put in formula a certain time before feeds and in breast-fed babies it has to be given before each feed in a bit of breast milk. This requires getting some breast milk ready and finding a way of giving it to the baby i.e. bottle, syringe etc which needs to be sterilized. Colief can be obtained on prescription from your GP once a lactose intolerance is established. Remember Colief only deals with the lactose part of milk so will not help if your baby is intolerant to milk fats, milk proteins or - in breat fed babies - something else altogether in the mother’s diet.

For more information see our Dairy Intolerance section.

Babies who seem angry and irritable, who cry almost all the time when they are awake and seem to dislike being handled may be suffering from compression or tension that started during pregnancy or birth. The most common cause for this behaviour is a birth where a lot of force has been applied to the baby’s head e.g. if the baby got stuck during birth; if its head was misaligned as it came down the birth canal; if there was a very difficult ventouse and forceps delivery; or if the second stage was abnormally long with the baby’s head receding between pushes. These babies may cry from the minute they are born, they are often "the loudest baby on the ward" and may even be given painkillers in their first few days of life by hospital staff. Parents may, quite understandably, feel rejected by a baby who appears to dislike cuddles and this may make it more difficult to bond with them. However, parents should be reassured that their baby's apparent dislike of being handled is just sensitivity due to a traumatic birth. Cranial Osteopathy can find the areas made sensitive by birth and gently release them to allow your baby to relax, be comfortable and enjoy being held at last.

A tense, anxious baby who startles easily and often wakens itself by jerky movements has usually been through anxious times during pregnancy or birth. Key events in pregnancy include: mum bleeing; threatened miscarriage; threatened early labour or problems with the placenta. Specific difficulties around the time of birth include: prematurity; foetal distress; umbilical cord around the neck or breathing difficulties at birth. These babies have tensed up due to stressful events. Although the stress has passed, they remain stuck in a tense, hyper-alert state and cannot relax back to normal by themselves. Cranial Osteopathic treatment can gently relax them back to a normal state by releasing any areas of abnormal tension. After successful treatment the startling and jerkiness should disappear and the baby should be able to relax and be contented.

Tummy pain can arise if the baby has difficulty digesting their food. Green poo is a sign of this (baby poo should be yellow and liquid until they are weaned). Green poo for a day or two could be something their mother ate, teething or a bug they are fighting off. However, green poo every day suggests a digestive difficulty. Babies who have difficulty digesting their food may also posset, vomit or have diarrhea. For some babies the difficulty is just gut immaturity. This rectifies itself within the first three months of life. On the other hand it could be an intolerance to the milk they are drinking, please see Dairy Intolerance.

If your baby cries a lot and likes to be held for hours on end then a sling or papoose and a swing chair** are worth considering. All three offer your babysoothing motion whilst leaving your hansd free to get on with a few essential tasks. They will also give your arms, shoulders and back a rest. When choosing a sling, papoose or swing chair it is best to try them with your baby to make sure your baby is comfortable and, in the case of slings and papooses, that you are too. With a swing chair make sure that the cushioning around your baby’s head is adequate that it has a seat that reclines.

If you find that you are regularly experiencing discomfort in your back, shoulders, pelvis, legs or arms then ring us to discuss your symptoms, Osteopathic treatment may be able to help you.

**By swing chair I mean a battery-operated baby seat that swings on a frame continuously when switched on.

If the cause seems to be wind, make sure you burp your baby after each feed. If it is really difficult to get a burp up, try Infacol*. Infacol is available off the shelf in the baby section at the Chemist and all major supermarkets. It is a sweet-tasting goo which is skirted from a dropper into the baby’s mouth before each feed. It aims to get all air in the stomach to join up into one big bubble which can then be more easily burped up.

For wind in the lower gut, try easing the discomfort by putting light pressure on your baby’s tummy. If the cause of their distress really is lower gut pain then this will soothe them instantly. Methods include putting them face down over your knees, high up on you shoulder, or face down over your arms whilst you are standing. Remember to hold them really firmly whilst trying these positions as babies with gut pain can fling themselves around wildly and without warning.

Personally and professionally I have nothing against a dummy when used in that "sucky" phase i.e. the first three months or so. There are various shapes and textures and you may have to shop around to find one your baby likes. Many babies will not take a dummy at all no matter how much they seem to benefit from suckiing your finger! In this case go to consider below. If your baby does take to a dummy remember it really should be withdrawn at around 6 months - before your baby gets really assertive - or you’ll have a battle on your hands. By 6 months a baby can suck their fingers or thumb if they want to soothe themselves to sleep and if you remove the dummy at this age they will very soon find their finger or thumb instead. The benefit of fingers or a thumb over a dummy is that they never go missing (!) and you can’t suck them and play at the same time so they tend only to be used when they are really needed i.e going to sleep. Are finger and thumb-sucking potentially more of a problem habit than a dummy? Well, I would hope that a child would grow out of sucking their fingers or thumb by the time they go to school. If not then it may be time to consider why they do it at all. If they had a difficult gestation or birth then they may feel rather tense in themselves and this is could be what they are trying to soothe when thumb/finger-sucking. In this case it may be time to have them checked out by a Cranial Osteopath. We are quite happy to discuss this kind of situation with a parent and even to give a free check-up if it cannot be established by a telephone discussion whether or not Cranial Osteopathy would help.