A colic diary

Why a diary helps

Crying in the colic period usually carries a shape of its own: it starts around a particular time of day, it settles after a fairly typical stretch, and it has some relationship to feeding. That shape is invisible while you are living it, because exhaustion makes every day resemble every other day. Written down, it becomes visible.

The second benefit is for the clinician. How long the crying lasts, which hours it clusters in, whether it comes with vomiting or with slowed weight gain — these are the first questions asked in the room. When the answers come from a record rather than from memory, the assessment is far better grounded.

What to record

Not everything. A few things, consistently:

• Crying — start time, roughly how long, what you tried and whether it helped
• Feeding — time, how long or how much, and which side if you are nursing
• Sleep — start and end
• Nappies — time and contents (wet, dirty, both)
• Vomiting or unusual output — time and what it looked like
• Your own note — one line, like "calmer evening than yesterday"

If you are breastfeeding and suspect a particular food, marking the days you ate it can be worth doing. On its own it proves nothing; it is an observation to raise with your clinician.

How to keep it

Three days at minimum, a week if you can manage it. Anything shorter and you risk mistaking one bad day for a pattern. Anything longer and most families stop keeping it.

Record in the moment rather than reconstructing at bedtime — times slide badly in memory. Agubu's quick log tiles and history screen are enough for this, and a paper notebook works just as well. What matters is not the tool but that the entry is made as it happens.

Reading the pattern

After a week, look at three questions:

• Which hours does the crying cluster in? Fussing in the colic period usually gathers in the late afternoon and evening.
• How much does it add up to? Crying that runs more than three hours a day, on more than three days a week, for more than three weeks is the pattern clinicians often call the rule of threes.
• Does it start right after a feed, or long after one? Those point in different directions.

Those three answers are, more or less, what you came to say.

What to bring to the appointment

• The last week of the diary, printed or ready to show on your phone
• Weight measurements if a clinic has been tracking them
• Which soothing methods you tried and how well each one worked
• Whether anything else is going on: vomiting, diarrhoea, constipation, rash
• Family history — allergy, food sensitivity, digestive conditions
• Your own questions, written down. Questions get forgotten one by one in the room, and a list survives that.

When to see a doctor

Keeping a diary does not mean waiting. Seek help without delay if:

• The crying comes with fever, vomiting, diarrhoea, blood in the stool or a rash
• Your baby refuses feeds, or weight gain has stalled
• The cry sounds unusually high-pitched, weak or moaning
• Your baby seems unusually floppy or is difficult to rouse
• The crying began after a fall, a knock or an injury
• You feel at the end of your strength, or you are frightened of what you might do — that belongs in the conversation too

In an emergency, call your local emergency number.

Sources

• American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) — information on infant crying and colic
• NHS (UK) — guidance on colic and excessive crying
• NICE (UK) — assessment topics for colic in infants
• Ministry of Health of Turkiye — infant and child follow-up guidance