Jan intelligently (as always! ) writes:

<< I think we make colic too simplistic...."Oh, MY child had colic, and we
just
 took dairy out of my diet and it went away."  No, your child had a
 sensitivity to cow's milk protein, not colic.

 So I agree w/ Kate.  Colic is NOT the result of overfeeding.  In fact, when
 they have done fluoroscopies on babies suffering from "colic" there was no
 difference in the distention or gut motility of those babies than there were
 in babies that didn't have colic.

 It boils down to -- we don't know what colic really is. >>


Well, yes, from a scientific standpoint you are obviously totally correct.
But from the ordinary observer's point of view, if it looks like colic,
smells like colic, sounds (all night, oy) like colic, it may not be helpful
to mothers to refuse to call it colic.   So the way I try to talk about this,
in an effort to bring those two perspectives into view simultaneously, is
usually,

"The baby acted horribly colicky; but it turned out that really the "colic"
was really caused by  all that crying was the dairy in her mom's diet [or
oversupply, or whatever] and when we fixed that the "colic" went away."

As an editor I am always making people take away the quotation marks around
words they are trying to emphasize, because the imply that that word isn't
the real name of the thing.   But in this case quote marks (in writing or
with forefingers) are meant to imply that exactly -- that we call it colic
but it isn't.    The words "apparent" or if you are feeling snippy
"so-called" can work well here, too.

ESU
always trying to help bring the mothers to the same perspective as ours, in
so far as that is helpful

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