4 week old baby squirming in night

[AprilShowers16]

Looking for any advice as my 4 week old baby is really squirmy and uncomfortable at night. He sleeps fine in the day (up to 5 hours either in Moses basket or pram) and in the evening has been falling asleep at 10pmish and then sleeping for about 3 hours but after that he will only sleep for 45 mins at a time and each time wakes up squirmy and groaning, this continues through the night until about 8-9am when my partner takes him out in the pram and he falls asleep for another 3-4 hours (and I sleep!)

When he wakes up I feed him (although he's not always hungry so I don't think that's always the reason he's waking) and burp him, bicycle legs etc. I put him down and he usually squirms and moans for a bit and eventually falls asleep - and then it starts again about 45 mins later.

I appreciate the answer is probably just that he's a newborn and to ride it out etc. I'm just concerned because he seems in pain and he barely cries or fusses the rest of the time and is generally fine to fall asleep in the Moses basket. The first week or so he was home he was sleeping 4 hours a time at night but it's gradually got worse.

[cherrypiemay16]

I had this problem with my baby too. Mostly it's just wind I think although I never really got to the bottom of it (he's 3 months now and being investigated for cows milk protein allergy). Do you give him a good winding after feeds? I ended up on infacol which worked for us for a couple of months. Maybe tilt the Moses basket a bit to encourage the wind to come up. I think it's quite common for wind to be worse at night. Sorry, not much help. Hope it improves soon

[ElspethFlashman]

It could be CMPI, where they find it very hard to digest the proteins in dairy. Lower gut discomfort is a symptom as it gets down there but then it gets crampy.

The answer is simple: no dairy.

Lots of threads on it here if you do a search. My DS had the same & was diagnosed at 6 weeks cos of nocturnal lower GI distress (& very acidic and frequent poos). Once it got sorted, the difference was amazing.

[AprilShowers16]

Thanks for your replies, I actually started reading a bit about allergies this mornings elspeth - when you say you got it sorted was it as simple as cutting out dairy? Do you think is worth going to GP or just try no dairy and see what happens? Will do some searching on here!

[ElspethFlashman]

I presume you're BFing? I cut out dairy for a month - harder than you think, do you know there's dairy in biscuits and pizza??!

You have to check every packet and the vast majority of my food came from the Tesco Free From range.

There was a modicum of improvement but not much tbh. At this point I was getting desperate as felt bad for the baby and was finding the diet stressful. Went back to GP + he gently suggested formula and pointed out DS could have issues with soy also for all I knew as often they're partnered. I felt horribly guilty but I have to say his pains were gone in about 10 days after switching to Neocate so it was the right thing for us.

But some people persist with the diet for a full year and have great success. I think I was just too worn out as BFing itself wasn't easy for me so putting a fairly restrictive diet on top of that was too tough when I wasn't seeing much results.

So of course it's worth a try - however it takes a few weeks for the dairy protein to leave the system so that's why you have to give it a month.