Home remedies · Children & infants
No home remedy here replaces treatment, and none is talked down. What has done good for generations does good — even if no one ever measured it. Where something is well studied, it says so. Where it is only experience, it says that too.
Stroke clockwise around the navel with a warm hand for five minutes, several times a day; gently bend the legs up as well.
The direction follows the course of the large bowel, the warmth and skin contact calm. For the first months this is one of the few remedies with no downside.
It does not end colic — that resolves by itself, usually around the fourth month.
Not with a distended, hard belly, vomiting of bile, bloody stools or a child crying shrilly and seeming listless — see a doctor at once.
At once: any fever in an infant under three months, a child who is apathetic or has stopped drinking, skin bleeding that does not fade under pressure, breathlessness or drawn-in ribs. A first seizure is always looked at. Refusing to drink for hours counts for more than the temperature.