Background:Many infants under 4 months suffer frominfantile colic.
Infants with colic cry a lot, appear to be inpain, and it is difficult
to sooth them. Colic is a painfulcondition for the infant and very
stressful to parents. Par-ents in Finland get advice to try reflexology
treatment fortheir infant, but there are no studies in Finland to
sup-port this advice.Aim:The aim of the pilot study was to treat infants
withreflexology and find out parents’ experiences of theeffects of the
treatment on colic symptoms and parentalstress.
Method:A total of 33
parents of 35 infants diagnosedwith colic participated to the pilot
study. Three certifiedreflexologists with health care education
backgroundand extensive experience in infant reflexology weretrained to
give the reflexology treatment in a standard-ised manner. They treated
each infant 3–4 times. Thewhole body reflexology treatment session
consisted ofgentle pressure treatment of soles and feet, hands,
head,face, ears, back, neck and whole stomach area. Onetreatment
session lasted about 20–30 seconds, andtreatments were delivered
within 8–12 days. The datawere collected from the parents with
semi-structuredquestionnaires.
Results:The series of the treatments
helped reduce thesuffering of all the babies with infant colic. The
colicsymptoms disappeared on 43% of infants and decreasedon the
remaining 57%. The parents reported havingpleasant experiences with
the treatment, regardlesswhether the colic symptoms disappeared or
continued.Parents stated that the treatment reduced the most typi-cal
colic symptoms; infants’ body tension, colic cryingand restless
movements, poor sleep quality and irregularbowel
movements.
Conclusions:Reflexology treatment seems to be a safe
andeffective way to treat infants with colic when conductedby a health
care professional with reflexology trainingand experience.