Remembering the Chaos - But Life Went on and the Wound Healed. A Four Year Follow Up with Parents having had a Baby with Infantile Colic

OBJECTIVE: To elucidate parent´s experience of having had a baby with colic four years previously and of how the colic and care influenced the family in a long-term perspective. METHODOLOGY AND PARTICIPANTS: A qualitative inductive follow-up study with 13 individual and one focus group interview including four parents. Altogether ten mothers and seven fathers representing 12 families, who had been interviewed when they were in the midst of the colicky period four years ago, were in the present study interviewed between December 2010 and May 2011. Parents’ narratives were analysed using content analysis. RESULTS: Parent´s memories of the exhausting colic period were vivid, but when the colic had healed the family relationships also healed. Although it had taken longer time for some parents to attach to their child they now experienced a close relationship with their four year old child and felt confident in their role as parent. The colic scream was still unbearable and evoked negative feelings in the parents. Parents had decreased confidence in Child Health services and made suggestions for improvements in the health care approach. Most of all they wished for an effective treatment of infantile colic. CONCLUSION: The family relationships were healed and the colic left only few residual symptoms but parents still had decreased confidence in the Child Health Center. Consequently, there is a need to raise awareness to parents’ situation when having a child with infantile colic.