Is this normal?

[lentilsoup21]

My 3 week old baby has just had a terrible night. I fed him at 8.30 last night (we're ebf) and he basically wouldn't settle til 3am...crying on and off, arching his back, generally unhappy. I managed to feed him several more times until he finally settled, but he wasn't very happy about it. I've started giving him infacol but don't know if it's started to work yet. He's had a few unsettled periods during the evenings but nothing like this. Is this normal?! Could it be the start of colic? Any advice welcome, we were going out of our minds last night...

[tiktok]

lentil what a horrible night :(

However, probably all parents, bf or ff, experience at least a few nights like this.

New babies have so much that's new to get used to, and they can get themselves into a spiral of distress. Sometimes this is diagnosed as colic, but as no one knows for sure what colic is, it's more of a description than a diagnosis.

It can help to bring the baby into bed with you (there are rules about how to do it safely) and this means the baby is soothed and reassured by your presence (which is familiar to him and feels safe and restful to him). Did you try this at all?

[whereisshe]

DD was like that for a bit at around that age. The advice I got was to let her grow out of it, as it's part of the process of the gut maturing. There's a tiny chance that it's lactose intolerance but that's unlikely.

She did grow out of it, I didn't use infacol or anything else (others in my antenatal group did and said it didn't work - if you're burping them enough then infacol is a waste of time).

The colic hold helped I found, as did feeding lying down and offering lots of comfort. Some people find that correcting the latch helps, as a slightly bad latch can lead to them gulping a bit of air. Also pause feeding regularly to burp, see it that helps.

Good luck - it does get better! I feel for you, that phase when they're in windy pain and you can't do anything is horrible.

[lentilsoup21]

Thanks so much for your replies and reassurance, we've had a better couple of nights although the little man still seems to be in discomfort. I haven't brought him into our bed yet but I will try this. I haven't come across the colic hold but will definitely look this up! He does seem to gulp quite a lot at the boob, and I can hear him swallowing air...perhaps checking the latch is the way to go. Thanks again for your help xx

[monkeymadness1]

I found feeding lying down gave dd more wind when she was very little.

We went through a period of a few weeks when she was 1-2 months old where she would be awake all night grumpy and windy and then sleep all day- nothing we could do would swap her sleep pattern and it was exhausting as we have other children so no sleep time during the day!

We found infacol pointless. Gripe water is what worked. Literally we'd spend hour and hours rubbing, patting, trying to get up wind, one drop of gripe water and a few minutes later a huge ( sometimes made me jump!) burp would pop out. Other times we'd lay her across my lap face down and rub her back in circles, seemed to help with "bottom end" wind.