Maybe Crying Babies have Headaches

A new study shows that mothers with migraines are more than twice as likely to report colic in their babies.

I suppose this could be because mothers with migraines are a lot less tolerant of crying, but it might also be that babies cry because their heads hurt:

Mothers who suffered migraines were found to be two-and-a-half times more likely to have colicky babies. Overall, 29 percent of infants whose mothers had migraines had colic compared to 11 percent of babies whose mothers did not have migraines.

Gelfand and her colleagues believe colic may be an early manifestation of a set of conditions known as childhood periodic syndromes, believed to be precursors to migraine headaches later in life. Babies with colic may be more sensitive to stimuli in their environment just as are migraine sufferers. They may have more difficulty coping with the onslaught of new stimuli after birth as they are thrust from the dark, warm, muffled life inside the womb into a world that is bright, cold, noisy and filled with touchy hands and bouncy knees.

I am attracted to this idea because I started getting migraines in high school and even at that age it took me four or five years to figure out what was happening to me and get help for it.

Fortunately I never had a colicky baby. Before I had babies, my biggest fear was that they would be crying and I wouldn't know why or what to do about it. It turned out that when they were crying it was usually because of something I was doing to them; they were screaming, "Leave me alone!"