What is distinct about infants' "colic" cries?   Commentary

Abstract

Aims-To investigate (1) whether colic cries are acoustically distinct from prefeed "hunger" cries; (2) the role of the acoustic properties of these cries versus their other properties in accounting for parents' concerns about colic. Design-From a community sample, infants were selected who met Wessel colic criteria for amounts of crying and whose mothers identified colic bouts. Using acoustic analyses, the most intense segments of nine colic bouts were compared with matched segments from pre-feed cries presumed to reflect hunger. Results-The colic cries did not have a higher pitch or proportion of dysphonation than the pre-feed cries. They did contain more frequent shorter utterances, but these resembled normal cries investigated in other studies. There is no evidence that colic cries have distinct acoustic features that are reproducible across samples and studies, which identify a discrete clinical condition, and which are identified accurately by parents. Conclusions-The most reliable finding is that colic cries convey diVuse acoustic and audible information that a baby is highly aroused or distressed. Non-acoustic features, including the prolonged, hard to soothe, and unexplained nature of the cries may be specific to colic cries and more important for parents. These properties might reflect temperament-like dispositions. (Arch Dis Child 1999;80:56-62)

Supporting insensitive mothers: the Vilnius randomized control trial of video‐feedback intervention to promote maternal sensitivity and infant attachment security

“…The first intervention session was arranged approximately 1 month after the first home visit (which was part of the screening procedure and served as a pre‐test), and videotaped interaction of this first home visit was used for video‐feedback. Furthermore, mothers were asked to fill in a ‘baby's diary’ (St James‐Roberts 1999), noting infants crying, fussing, sleeping, awake and satisfied behavioural states and caregivers' reactions to the infant (feeding, playing with him/her etc.) for three consecutive days.…”

Colic: What's maternal mental health got to do with it?

“…Mothers whose infants did not meet criteria for Wessel et al's (1954) rule of three but sought medical intervention for colic were less tolerant of their infant's crying, experienced more anxiety, and assigned more negative attributions to their relationships with their infants than did mothers whose infants met criteria for colic or were in the control group (Pauli‐Pott, Becker, Mertesacker, & Beckmann, 2000). Some parents are more affected by other aspects of colic, such as the long periods of unexplained inconsolability, than by distinct features of the infant's cry (St James‐Roberts, 1999).…”

Helping parents to manage infant crying and sleeping: a review of the evidence and its implications for services

“…As well as querying the gastrointestinal origins of most crying in early infancy, recent studies have challenged the assumption that the crying signals pain (St James-Roberts, 1999;St James-Roberts et al, 1995a. Instead, the features found to disturb parents most are the prolonged length of the infants' cry bouts, the relatively high intensity of the crying (i.e.…”