ABSTRACT
The cardinal symptom of colic is excessive crying that tends to increase in the first 2 months before returning to more normal and stable levels by 4 months. Because the crying of infants with colic is understood as a signal of distress, continues to increase even with optimal caregiving, and is associated with facial configurations thought to be related to pain, it is understandably taken to indicate that something is wrong or abnormal. This chapter measures daily fussing/crying, sleep, and awake-alert behavior by parental diary, and assesses salivary Cortisol production by having parents take saliva samples from their infants at wakeup, midmorning, midafternoon, and evening. It examines whether infants with and without colic differed in sleep and daily patterns of Cortisol production. The chapter examines whether a more marked rhythm or slope in daily Cortisol patterning was associated with better maintenance of nondistressed awake behavior during the daytime hours.
