Several colic medications have been tried throughout the years, with varying degrees of success. However, recent studies out of the Southwest SIDS ( Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) Research Institute in Lake Jackson, Texas, and Children’s Hospital in Camperdown, New South Wales, Australia, have found that colic medications may prove dangerous and even fatal.

The Texas researchers studied eight infants who were experiencing life- threatening respiratory and gastrointestinal symptoms. All of the babies had previously been given a premixed colic medication containing Dramamine, a popular antihistamine used to relieve motion sickness, and Donnatal, a drug prescribed for irritable bowel syndrome and other intestinal disorders. Donnatal contains, among other things, phenobarbital, a barbiturate used as a sedative. In an article published in the journal Clinical Pediatrics, the researchers wrote that the possibility that the drug can lead to respiratory and gastrointestinal problems in certain infants “requires serious consideration and further evaluation.”

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In 1962, the famous pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton, MD., published a study of the crying patterns of 80 normal, middle-class infants. He found that their crying lasted for about two hours a day at two weeks of age, increased to a peak of almost three hours a day by six weeks of age, and then gradually decreased to about one hour a day by the time they had reached three months of age.

The generally accepted medical definition of colic is a young infant who is otherwise healthy and well fed, but who has bouts of irritability, fussing, or crying lasting for a total of more than three hours a day on more than three days of the week, according to William B. Carey, M.D. Sometimes, doctors add the stipulation that the baby’s excessive crying continue for a period of more than three weeks to be considered colic.

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Another important component to the well- being of your colicky baby and to you is your sanity. So some of the tips below are designed to help you cope.

Set the baby in motion. As most parents can attest, mild repetitious motion, such as that of a moving car or a rocking chair, can calm a cranky baby. With a colicky child, that knowledge is doubly important, according to Cheston M. Berlin, Jr., M.D., a professor of pediatrics and of pharmacology at Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine’s Milton S.Hershey Medical Center in Hershey. “Motion is the best thing for children who are having so much trouble,” he says. If taking the child out in the car is too inconvenient, he recommends putting the child in a safety seat and placing it atop a running dryer (don’t leave the baby unattended).

There are also devices on the market that will rock or vibrate the baby’s crib, Berlin says. Some of these devices even have sound sensors that will start the motion only when the baby starts crying and will stop after it senses that the baby has calmed down or gone to sleep. One device even simulates the motion of a car moving at 55 miles per hour. Some physicians find it effective, while others feel that it makes little difference.

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