A pilot study of parents’ experiences of reflexology treatment for infants with colic in Finland

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.