The Sept. 17 issue of The New Yorker has a long, ultimately frustrating article on the perplexing mysteries of colic. If your kid has colic, please don't use your one precious, quiet hour reading about colic, though. Just go rest, take care of yourself, and realize that no one else knows WTF is going on with colic, either. Here are some key excerpts:

Sheila Kitzinger, a British social anthropologist who studies pregnancy and childbirth, has written, "The sound of a crying baby...is just about the most disturbing, demanding, shattering noise we can hear." The United States military has reportedly used the sound of wailing infants as an instrument of psychological stress, piping recordings of their cries into cells of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

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[In 1954, Yale pediatrician Morris] Wessel noted that colicky babies tend to cry most in the evening, and that the crying typicall waned between the age of two and three months...[Wessel was not] able to explain why the babies cried most in the evening. "Many of us are more irritable later in the day," he said. "That's why there is a cocktail hour."

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[Head of the Brown University medical school colic clinic Dr. Pamela] High said, "Moms [sic] feel they need to do everything in response to a screaming child. One of the key things we teach moms [sic] with colicky babies is that this unhealthy symbiosis needs to be broken. The baby must learn self-soothing." As the mother [sic] learns to let the baby cry [for 5-10 minutes, after checking for signs of hunger, discomfort, wetness, etc. clinic founder Dr. Barry] Lester said, "the baby will realize, 'Gee, I can do this.'"

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[Based on a follow-up study of former infant patients at the clinic], Lester speculates that many colicky infants are so sensitive to stimuli that physical contact with their parents is unlikely to soothe them, a theory that may be supported by data from societies where babies are held continuously.

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As Lester put it, "The parent must attend to the needs of the baby and also help the baby learn self-limits and control." Because colic is the "first bump in the road for many parents, he said, "it will influence how you deal with the second, the third, and so on, creating a template for how you deal with future interactions with your child. Sure, we know the crying is going to stop, but the damage that's done to the mother [sic[ and the family can be long-lasting and hard to put right again."

text not online: Annals of Medicine/ Crybabies/ by Jerome Groopman/ The conundrum of colic. [newyorker.com]