Colic
Also called colicky, colicky baby, baby colic, infant colic
Colic is when a healthy baby cries a lot and there's no obvious cause, often in the afternoon and evening. Parents call a baby who cries like this colicky.
How it's said
...he absolutely did have colic. He screamed non-stop from 4pm every single day for 3 months.
If you had one colicky baby, are you likely to have another?
With the colic, she starts witching hour (crying) around the same time every night and it goes on for hours.
Who says it
Not to be confused with
- The witching hour is a fussy stretch in the evening that many babies have. Colic is the word for crying that goes on far longer, day after day, with no obvious cause.
- Reflux is when a baby brings up milk during or shortly after a feed. Parents often ask which one their baby has, because both can come with a lot of crying.
Where it came from
Colic is an old word. It came into English from French and goes back to an ancient Greek word for suffering in the colon, and in general English it still means gripping pains in the belly.
For babies it names long bouts of crying in a baby who is otherwise healthy. The first detailed medical description of baby colic was published in 1954, and doctors still define it by how many hours a day and days a week a baby cries.