I’d forgotten how horrible colic is in tiny babies, how awful it makes them feel and in turn how horrible it makes you feel as a parent watching them. Because really, once they are in the throes of a bout, it doesn’t matter how much jiggling and soothing you offer, the pair of you have to ride it out.
Florence suffered terribly and it was heartbreaking listening to her cry. She found some sort of contentment in music and as we swayed with her nightly to Simply Red, her artists of choice, we both used to cry our way through it. We eventually found some remedies which worked over time but I wish we’d found a quicker acting solution and I wish we’d found it sooner. Jimmy was lucky and didn’t suffer so that lulled me into a false sense of security where I forgot that pained face of a new born and when Raffie began to suffer a couple of weeks ago I turned to social media to ask what I should do. The resounding answer was try Colief, a solution which you add to either a bottle of expressed breast milk or formula. Raffie, like his brother and sister, is exclusively breast fed but unlike Florence he will take a bottle so we started adding Colief drops to a nightly feed for him just before the time he begins to get pains.
We give an expressed bottle early evening and this works well as it allows me to make tea while Jonny gives him this feed and then Raffie has another bottle of expressed milk after I’ve gone to bed (Jonny does a late shift to give me a couple of hours) where we would add Colief as well. To prepare the Colief is very simple, you add 4 droplets from the bottle into the milk you are using – you don’t have to bottle feed and can just give them a tiny amount of expressed milk mixed with the droplets before breast feeding. I haven’t tried this yet as it seems to be working for us just doing the evening bottles but if he starts to get worse again then I will do this before every feed as advised in the video below.
Obviously it might be better to use the Colief for every feed but as we breast feed mostly I have decided that for now we will only give with his expressed bottles. If it continues to improve then brilliant but I know I can express a few spoons for before every feed if I need to. I do think it’s made a difference to his evenings, that and Mick Hucknall who seems to just have a wizardry affect on all my children – I must have listened to ‘Stars’ and ‘For Your Babies’ (the two magic songs) more than any other songs I’ve ever listened to in the whole world – whatever works hey!
So… My advice would be, if you have a colicky baby, to try Colief – it definitely makes a difference even with only two small evening feeds and also… Pop a bit of the Huck on because Simply Red obviously hold a bit of a key to baby contentment!
We are working in collaboration with Colief but would not be able to recommend if it hadn’t made a difference to Raffie’s evenings. It has and we will continue to use it – thank you Colief, we are very grateful to you! And thank you Mick, we’re grateful to you too – now if you’d like to move in with us and sing on demand that would be most appreciated!
To find out more about Colief® Infant Drops, just visit here
You can even watch these videos from Dawn Kelly, Independent Health Visitor and a member of Colief’s expert panel.
Available at Colief, Boots and Superdrug
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