Call it “colic” (American), or “gas” (Caribbean), or “gripe” (British), or the new one it has recently been replaced with, “infant distress syndrome” (Rome). Whatever you name it, it causes parents, especially new parents, endless worry!
Depending on the country, it occurs anywhere from one in 20 babies to one in five and describes recurrent and prolonged crying, fussing, or irritability in an infant younger than five months old where there is no obvious medical cause, hence the new broader term, ”infant distress syndrome.”
This is now defined as a disorder of gut-brain interaction (DGBI) that involves the developing nervous system, the gut and environmental or caregiver dynamics. This new terminology has the satisfaction of pleasing nobody, explaining nothing and calming no one, but satisfies the medical longing to make people think we know exactly what we are doing while involving every possible malfunction of the human body.
Whether you call it, colic, gas, gripe or infant distress syndrome, together with heat rash and teething, it forms part of the indispensable triad defining the life of a Caribbean infant.
How can you be West Indian unless you were born with gas, got heat rash at one month, began teething at four months and continued with teething symptoms the rest of your baby life.
In fact, moving away from the term “colic,” “gas” and “gripe,” which implies a specific but unconfirmed gut relationship, may be a good move in the long run.
In the short term, mothers will steups and continue to call it “colic” or “gas” or “gripe” and drug manufacturers will gleefully continue to make “anticolic medication” or “gas drops” or the hopefully named “gripe water,” which used to contain alcohol up to the 1970s and “worked!”
Yeah, a little alcohol never hurt anyone, no? Kept that there baby quiet!
Eczema, or allergic dermatitis (skin rash), is another common problem all over the world. In T&T too. The figure given is that ten to 20 per cent of small children have eczema. Treatment is difficult, based on skin moisturisers and steroid creams. Like colic, frequent changes of diet, formula especially, since both colic and eczema are more common in formula-fed babies (what else did you expect?), are commonly used in the early phases. Results are inconsistent.
It so happens that there is a relationship between gripe and eczema. Babies who have colic have higher rates of allergic conditions, including eczema, sinus and asthma, in later life. Because of this and because they are so common in T&T, many times they are not taken on and quickly forgotten.
I am now a grandfather paediatrician seeing the grandchildren of former patients from the 70s and 80s. It always surprises me when I am told that there is no family history of colic or allergy when my notes of the parents and grands clearly show the diagnoses, treatments and occasional successes.
So these illnesses are common and, despite spontaneous resolution in most cases, treatment is not satisfactory. Perhaps a preventive approach might be useful? Since they seem to be related to food, perhaps getting pregnant moms to eat a bit differently during pregnancy, before the baby is born, could help prevent colic and allergic conditions?
Well, it turns out that infants born to mothers who eat a Mediterranean-style diet during pregnancy are at lower risk of getting colic and eczema. A Mediterranean diet means lots of fruits, fresh vegetables, whole grains, legumes with some dairy and lean protein. It’s simply a healthy diet. On the other hand, eating junk during pregnancy, ie red or processed meats, sweet drinks and refined grains, is associated with infantile colic and allergy.
Consuming seafood especially helped lower an infant’s risk. Just eating some form of seafood once a week during the nine months of pregnancy lowered a woman’s baby’s risk of having colic or eczema by 25 per cent.
Conclusion? A mother’s diet is associated with infantile colic and with later development of allergy, especially eczema. That’s unfortunate but that’s the way it is.
Pregnant women should be given all the assistance we can, beginning with knowledge, before and during their pregnancies, to help them eat better and save them, at least in some cases, from the agony of seeing and hearing their babies cry and cry and cry for no apparent reason and later on develop itchy, dry skin, persistent runny noses and chronic cough that makes everyone’s lives miserable.
