Infant colic is one of the hardest experiences in the early weeks with a new baby. Hours of inconsolable crying, broken nights, exhausted parents trying everything and finding nothing that reliably helps. It's one of the most common reasons families look at CST for infants, and practitioners who work with babies see colic regularly.
A 2019 randomised controlled trial set out to test whether CST makes a measurable difference. Fifty-eight infants were randomised to receive either one to three CST sessions or no treatment. Outcomes were measured across crying hours, colic severity, and sleep duration.
The CST group showed significant improvements in all three. Understanding what those results mean — including their real limitations — helps families and practitioners think clearly about what the evidence says.
Trial design and measurements
The 58 infants were randomised at enrolment, which means by chance the two groups should have started out similar in colic severity and other relevant traits. Randomisation is what allows you to say that differences in outcomes are due to the treatment rather than pre-existing differences between the babies.
CST was delivered in one to three sessions by trained practitioners. The outcomes were straightforward: crying hours per day, a standardised colic severity score, and nightly sleep duration. They were measured at baseline and after the treatment period, allowing direct comparison between groups.
Infants in the CST group showed significantly reduced crying hours, lower colic severity scores, and increased sleep compared with the no-treatment group. For sleep-deprived parents with a screaming baby, those outcomes — if real — represent something that genuinely matters.
The caveats that matter
The biggest caveat is the control condition. The comparison group received no treatment, which means we can't separate three different contributions to any improvement: the natural resolution of colic (which happens anyway, as babies grow out of it), the attention and handling that comes with receiving sessions, and any specific effect of CST itself.
Colic typically resolves on its own in most infants by around three to four months. A trial running over several weeks will see improvement in both groups simply because of that. Without a sham control — a comparison group that received attention, handling, and a simulated treatment — there's no way to say how much of the improvement was due to CST specifically and how much was the natural course plus the effect of caring attention.
The sample size is also modest. Fifty-eight infants gives enough power to detect large effects but may not be enough to reliably detect medium or smaller ones. A larger trial with a proper sham control would give considerably more confidence in the findings.
What this means for families
Even with these limitations, the trial adds something. A no-treatment comparison still tells you that CST-plus-attention does better than nothing, and for families desperate for relief, that's meaningful. The question of how much is specific to CST versus how much is the loving attention of a gentle session is almost academic when you have a baby who has been crying for three hours.
CST for infants uses very light touch, much lighter than for adults, often at the base of the skull, along the spine, and around the sacrum. Practitioners working with babies tend to follow the infant's lead, working with whatever the baby seems to tolerate. Many families report that their infant seems calm during and after sessions, sometimes sleeping more soundly than usual.
The honest framing: we don't yet have the definitive trial that would confirm a specific effect of CST on infant colic beyond the benefits of any caring attention. But we do have a signal worth taking seriously, a therapy that is gentle and low-risk in trained hands, and a population of families for whom the cost of trying CST is low and the potential benefit is high.
The 2019 infant colic RCT is a meaningful contribution to the evidence base for CST with babies, even with its limits. For families who have tried other approaches without success, it gives reasonable grounds to explore CST with a practitioner experienced in working with infants.