Screaming baby

[magpiesam]

I'm at my wits end. 11 week old dd screams throughout the day and when I say scream I mean hysterically. It can come from nowhere and for no apparent reason. It's ear splitting and nothing I do seems to stop it. She sleeps well, is feeding well and sometimes seems really happy and content. But then she'll scream out of nowhere and it's so distressing. I don't believe in controlled crying especially at this age but sometimes I have no option but to put her down in her crib and leave her for a few minutes because it drives me absolutely mad. It's almost like a temper tantrum (although obviously I know she's too young for this) in that it's frantic and seems to peak then calm down after what feels like several hours.

I really don't think she's in pain with anything but something must be causing this. My other children never did anything like this. Is it normal? Any advice would be good as I feel so stressed and panicked when this happens that it's making me not want to go out.

OP I don’t know either, mine is 18 weeks and does exactly this sometimes. I can’t give you any practical advice, but have some solidarity. The helpless feeling is like nothing else isn’t it. You’re doing a good job, promise.

DD1 was like this- absolutely dreadful screaming all the time. She had CMPA but it took ages to get her prescribed an amino acid formula.
Generally babies are started on a hydrolysed formula like Aptamil Pepti or netramigen when diagnosed with CMPA but some babies are still unable to tolerate them and need to have an amino acid formula like Neocate.
I had 8 months of non stop screaming. Within 2 days of being put onto Neocate it was like I had a different baby.
I hope you manage to resolve it. I know how difficult it is.

I once fostered a baby like this, from birth to nearly 6 months, so I know what it feels like. In her case, when she was 15 months old, her adoptive parents eventually got a diagnosis. She was allergic to so many things, including lactose and eggs. I think you should ask for her to be checked for allergies. I feel awful that my foster baby was suffering and I didn't know.

Silent reflux?

You could try paced bottle feeding. Easy to do and worth a try.

^this.

Forgot to add that I really hope you see some improvement soon. Are there any other signs she could be reacting to the milk? Rashes? Mucus poos?

You're doing absolutely the right thing by putting her down and taking a few minutes when you need to.

My 11 week old is the same but I manage to calm him within about 30mins.
i just put it down to purple crying as there’s no other symptoms of anything for me to be concerned about.

it is sooo hard though.

Take her to an osteopath, in case it's muscular tightness or discomfort somewhere, from birth or position in the womb.

I had a screamer for 14 weeks, op. It was hell and you have my sympathy. He had two things going on, tension / pain in his back which was fixed by two visits to the osteopath and cmpa what finally stopped the crying was giving up all milk products 3 weeks it took to leave my system then a further 3 weeks to leave his system.

Hoping you find a solution soon.

I have a 12 week old, screamed horrendously for 9 weeks. Cut egg and dairy out of diet, prescribed omeprazole for reflux and attending chiropractor weekly. She is like a different baby.

Thank you for all the suggestions and support. Been a rough day. Hoping tomorrow will be better. For now she is sleeping and the silence is bliss.

Hi @magpiesam I hope you managed some sleep. Do you have support ? Someone who could take the baby for an hour to give you a break? When I was fostering and childminding I got a call at 11.30pm one night, just as I was about to go to bed. It was from a young woman, saying "What do you do when the baby has been screaming for hours and you've tried everything, and now you're out walking the streets and he's still screaming?" I said "I think you bring him round to Chooksnroses house ."
When she arrived a few minutes later, in floods of tears, pushing the pram, holding the baby, who was SCREAMING, I took the baby from her and said to him "What's all this then?" He almost immediately stopped screaming, but was giving little hiccuppy sobs every few minutes, because he'd been screaming for so long. I think that by that time he' and his mother had locked into this circle of tension and screaming. Having someone calm and reassuring had helped them both. She fed him then, whilst I made her a cup of tea, and within an hour they were on their way back home. She came round the next morning to tell me he'd slept all night. She'd left him in his pram, scared to lift him out in case she woke him again.
We discovered when my youngest daughter was a week old that she needed to cry for a few minutes before she went to sleep, when my husband put her in her cot saying "Your Mummy is going to have one meal in peace". It sort of made sense of what my Nana used to say. "Babies need to be put down sometimes when they are crying a lot. Holding them and passing them around makes their little bones hurt, so they cry more." She had 16 children so she probably knew what she was talking about.

I followed what I'd been taught by her and my Mum, which was feed, wind, change, cuddle, put down. The babies always slept without having to be nursed to sleep. So whatever other problems I had with my babies, getting them to sleep wasn't one of them. Obviously it wasn't so easy when they had colic. That was when I needed my husband to be the calm one and give me a break.

Does she sleep much during the day? My dd was like this at 12 weeks and I thought I would lose my mind.

I followed the advice in the contented baby book (I know she's not very popular on here) and it changed my life!

I think the problem was my dd needed a lot more sleep than I realised and in order to get that sleep she needed to be somewhere very quiet and dark. Once I got the routine right she was much happier, as was I.

She does sleep pretty well at night which is a blessing as id be even less able to cope during the day if I were totally sleep deprived too. But as soon as she wakes up she crying begins. She will have a few moments of looking around, gurgling, even smiling but it's always short lived and we're back to the screaming on and off throughout the day.

I don't really have anyone to leave her with. My mum works as does dh. So the majority falls on me.

The comment about a dark quiet room resonates as sometimes when she's really going berserk she does seem to calm if she's just left in her crib with the curtains shut and white noise playing. Maybe she's tired or over stimulated.

I agree with the others who say it's the milk, the first ones they try are always ones with broken down milk proteins in, my son was on alimentum (vile stuff, stunk like quavers 🤢) he shuddered the first bottle he had of it and I don't blame him. I was advised to add a drop of vanilla or crusha to it to make it taste a little better and it worked. Luckily for me the alimentum worked for him, but before that when we were bf and didn't know about his cmpa he would cry and scream and thrash around, he also had reflux so would want to feed to soothe the burn but then feeding hurt his poor tum. He also had a very gurgly tummy, the most horrendous trumps, would poop numerous times a day, explosive up the back ones! Within a few weeks of being on the alimentum he was like a different baby, smiley happy, would play and settle easier!

How long has baby been on the cmpa milk?? It can take up to 6-8 weeks for the previous milk to leave their system and their tummy to heal from what we were told. I'd definitely push to try a different milk, hope things get better for you both soon

Will she take a dummy?

My dd needed a nap in the morning after an hour of being awake so you might find that a nappy change and feed is all she needs and then put her back to bed.

Mine did this and would often scream herself to sleep. As she got older, she would often tantrum or be inconsolable when she got overtired, and my heart used to break at how often she cried herself to sleep but for her, she would hit a tiredness point and she could not cope with anything until she’d had a sleep. She wouldn’t give conventional signs of tiredness either (eye rubbing, that kind of thing). She’d just be normal, then screaming, then asleep.

It was hard to explain to anyone who hadn’t witnessed it but even now aged 7 her worst behaviour is at bedtime and she has trouble recognising tiredness. She has difficulty winding down and going to sleep but gets grumpier and grumpier. She didn’t have colic or anything like that- I think it was just a personality quirk that she gets moody when tired!

Another vote for the milk. When we moved to the hydrolysed stuff DS got much better but it seemed to 'build up' over time and got worse again. Then moved him to an amino acid formula and he was great on that for about a year. Good luck OP!