What to do if your baby has colic - read the New Parent action plan. 
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Colic: Crying That Just Won't Quit
So what happens if you've done everything you can think of to soothe your crying
baby, and nothing seems to help? You may be the proud, loving, and completely
exasperated parent of one of the approximately 15 percent of babies who have
colic.
"Colic is what I call a diagnosis of exclusion: We want to make sure that there
is nothing else that is causing a baby to cry, whether it occurs at the same time
each day or seems to appear out of the blue," explains Joe Hagen, M.D., a
clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of Vermont, College of
Medicine. "It may go on for an hour or it may go on for many hours. It is also
important for new parents to know that a diagnosis of colic is based on a baby's
age; colic rarely appears before two weeks and is generally gone by three to four
months."
Does every fussy baby within this age parameter have colic? Not necessarily.
Studies tell us that all babies cry a little bit at birth, then more at two
weeks, and a lot more at six to eight weeks; then the crying tends to diminish by
twelve weeks. If at the mellowest end of the spectrum are babies who would never
be termed fussy, at the other end are babies who cry a whole lot, and those are
the babies described as having colic. For the most part, the medical community no
longer believes colic is caused by gas pains or is necessarily related to gastric
distress. Interestingly, there are babies with colic who suffer from
gastroesophageal reflux, a digestive problem common in infants due to undeveloped
muscles in the esophagus. While some appear to get relief with an
acid-suppression medication such as Zantac, they continue to cry.
It is more likely that, as is the case with any age group, there is a range of
temperaments, personalities, and activity levels, and babies with colic represent
a particular segment of their peers with a propensity toward crying in the early
months of life. Fortunately, colic is not predictive of a baby's future and is
more likely to be a sign of neurological immaturity than anything else. In other
words, the crying is going to stop.
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