Photo of a crying baby with the words “A theory on colic”

Marie Shinmoto from MAP Physiotherapy is my go to person for pain for myself and for my family. She and I were recently chatting about babies and colic and how much I would have loved to stop the hours of crying every night that all three of my babies went through in their youngest months. I asked her if she could share some of her story of working with babies with colic in the hope it would help some of your babies (and you too!) ~ Lara

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If you’ve ever had, or know someone who has had a baby with colic you know the look. Everyone in the household is exhausted, stressed, and pretty much always on the verge of tears. There is no suffering quite like watching a child in pain and feeling helpless to do something about it. Colic is a unique kind of torture for everyone involved.

Despite it being around forever, how is it that there is still little out there for treatment other than gripe water, which parents of colicky children know doesn’t work. In order to develop effective treatment of any condition, you first have to have an understanding or at least a theory about what causes it. Right then, what causes colic? We don’t know.

That is what you’ll find is out there – a whole lot of shoulder shrugging and “poor you” looks.

Personally, I don’t accept “we don’t know” as an answer to any condition in the human body. I don’t believe things just happen out of the blue for no particular reason. If there is something going on that we can’t explain then it is our responsibility as health care practitioners to keep digging, keep asking questions, and keep testing theories until something pans out.

The colicky baby that came to stay with us

My journey into treating colic came about rather by accident. We had a friend whose extremely colicky baby landed in our care overnight once. His mother had warned us that we weren’t going to get any sleep, but we had no children of our own at the time so the possibility of being zombies the next day was no big deal.

When I changed his diaper in the afternoon I noticed something odd about how he was moving. I couldn’t help it - physiotherapists can never turn off their observation skills. When he kicked his right leg everything looked fine, but when he kicked his left leg the left side of his lower abdomen twisted up. My jaw dropped. The difference from one side to the other couldn’t have been more obvious. A theory about the cause of colic seemed to be looking right at me.

Pretty much all very young babies do when they’re awake is lie there and move their little limbs. If every time a baby kicks a leg his abdomen twists up, then surely that could affect digestion. After clearing it with mom, I decided to treat this little person. When I got my hands on him it became glaringly obvious that he had tightness through the whole left side of his body, but particularly through the front of the left hip and into the abdomen. Using very gentle techniques to release this area first and then the entire left side, I worked on him for about 20 minutes. At one point his little face screwed up and I was sure he was going to scream, but instead he took this great shuddering breath and let it out in a huge sigh. At that point I figured I had better quit before I woke the monster.

We carried on with our day, and as the afternoon went by I realized that we had passed the hour when mom said he always started to scream. Dumb luck I thought. The true litmus test would be overnight.

We gave him a last bottle at around 11:00 that night and went to bed with little expectation of sleeping. I woke with a start at 6:00 feeling guilty that I had in fact slept and afraid I had missed something. There he was sleeping peacefully.

It couldn’t be that easy. It just couldn’t. When mom picked him up later that morning she was already apologizing for him having kept us up all night before I even got the door fully open. When I told her he had slept for seven hours she was incredulous. He went home and never suffered from colic again.

More colicky babies

Needless to say I had to further test my theory. After that first experience I treated other babies with colic and always found the same thing – tightness in the front of the left hip and into the abdomen. Releasing the left side consistently resulted in the end of the horrific colic experience for the family, often with just one treatment.

So why don’t I have babies lined up out my door? I believe it is because this just sounds too good to be true. When everyone is saying that we don’t know what causes colic and there is no treatment for it, why would anyone believe me? I can’t say I blame people for the skepticism, but I know at the same time people really want to believe this can be fixed.

What to look for

So if that’s the case, then try this. Next time you are changing the diaper of your colicky baby, look very carefully at what is happening when they kick their legs. Look especially for twisting of the left side of the abdomen when they kick the left leg. If that is happening then what have you got to lose in coming in to get that addressed? Even if you don’t believe it will improve the colic, you surely would want to address something that isn’t moving as it should in your baby’s body anyway.

Help me test my theory further and come and see me if you find something. I am always curious to learn more.

You can find Marie and book an appointment from her web site, or check out her Facebook page.