Unsettled Babies Clinic

About the clinic

The Unsettled Babies Clinic at the Centre for Community Child Health, Royal Children’s Hospital has been established to support the community services. The clinic is staffed by paediatricians with an interest in infant distress and provides an outpatient service to parents and infants under the age of six months with the primary problem of persistent crying or colic.

This clinic has links with maternal and child health services, lactation consultants, mental health services, paediatric gastro-enterologists and allergy specialists, to facilitate optimal patient management.

Clinic staff include consultant paediatricians, senior paediatric trainees and clinic coordinators. There may be teaching and research activities in the clinic.

Patients are bulk billed for their consultations and therefore will need a referral from their general practitioner.

About unsettled babies

Persistent crying or colic with associated settling, sleeping, and feeding problems are common during the first weeks and months of life. This can be distressing for both the infants and their families.

In most cases, distress will lessen with simple interventions that help families to learn settling techniques that are effective for their baby and improve the feed/sleep routine.

In a few cases, distress may be the result of a medical problem such as gastro-oesophageal reflux, urinary tract infection or food protein intolerance.

The unsettled babies clinic provides a thorough paediatric and family assessment, as well as screening for postnatal depression. Postnatal depression, which may affect up to one in ten mothers, is more commonly seen in families presenting with a distressed or crying infant.

For unsettled babies without a medical cause, families will be provided with an individually tailored management plan, and are followed up weekly until improvement is seen.

For cases where a medical cause for the crying is probable, appropriate investigation and referral will follow.

Last Updated 03-Jul-2009. Authorised by: Frank Oberklaid. Enquiries: Penny Miller.