Unsettled babies – what’s going on?
Your baby is crying and screaming, waking frequently, or not sleeping at all. Perhaps your baby pulls his or her legs up, seems to have ‘wind”, wants to feed all the time. The same baby may be fussy on the breast (or bottle), be triggered in the car seat, or by dressing, have tension in the body, fisting of the hands, or extension of the neck.
When it comes to unsettled babies, parents can feel that they are guessing what is causing their baby to be irritable.
Is it colic? Is it reflux? Is there “wind pain”? Is it an intolerance, or even something “I’m doing”, or “not doing”? These are super common confusions and are often compounded when we are told by well meaning professionals, that it is “normal” and will “just go away.”
The term “colic” was coined way back in 1954. Even now the term is used based on shaky criteria, simply describing a group of signs, without looking deeper at ‘cause”.
Recognising this issue, myself and a colleague developed a method of approaching every unsettled baby that allows the practitioner to work out the underlying cause of an irritable baby, thus allowing solutions to be specific to the unique issues with this child.
Broadly speaking, these categories include
- Is the baby medically unwell?
- Does the baby have physical dysfunction patterns (or other physical causes of pain)?
- Is there intolerance or allergy?
- Is there an issue with settling methods, techniques, timings?
– and are the ideal methods being used based on the needs of a baby at different ages? - Is there an issue with feeding, intake, absorption of nutrients, or vomiting?
- Is there is an issue based around timings of sleep settling?
These 6 broad areas cover the vast majority of reasons a baby may be unsettled.
Naturally, this is just a summary, and there are many pieces of the puzzle to understand for practitioners using our method.
Most parents leave our first visit with a good understanding of the reasons THEIR baby is unsettled, and a specific strategy to help them manage or solve the problem.
To your blissful baby!
