... And I KNOW I really have no right/reason to be.
Gave birth to a ridiculously healthy 9lb 8oz baby girl almost 3 weeks ago. She seemed to get the hang of feeding pretty quickly, and I've had very little pain/discomfort breastfeeding. She only lost 100g of her birthweight in the first 3 days, and had regained it all plus an extra 2 oz by day 5. When last weighed (at 2 1/2 weeks) she was 10lbs 4oz, and has visibly grown. All this is GOOD, right?
But in the last couple of days I seems to have lost the plot.
During the day she's regular as clockwork and wakes up wanting food about every 3 1/2 to 4 hours, but she only feeds for about 10-15 minutes at a time. After this she shuts her little mouth firmly shut and will have no more. NO amount of burping/nappy changing offering second breast will coax her into taking more. Her poos have gone from yellow to greenish and very watery, and I'm worried this means she's not getting enough hind milk because of hr short feeds.
However, our evenings spiral into chaos confusion and tears on all sides... from anywhere between 6 and 8pm (depending on when the last feed happens in that time) she is impossible to settle. She is usually awake and distressed from that point until between 2 and 4 am. She seems to want to feed every 1 1/2 to 2 hours during that time (which would be fine by me if she would settle in between) but then sucks for only about 5 minutes before starting to scream and thrash around wildly. I'll try burping her and changing her and cuddling to try and get her to calm down. I've tried swaddling and sitting in a dark room in case she was over-stimulated. At some point she usually gets the hiccups which can last for up to half an hour. Then I figured that maybe my milk supply was low, so I tried preparing a bottle of formula - you would have thought I'd tried to give her bleach - she screamed even louder and thrashed about even more. Eventually I think sheer exhaustion takes over from having cried and thrashed about for anything up to 8 hours and she falls asleep.
I then have to wake her in the morning (left it until 9am this morning after a 2am finish) as she's dead to the world, for fear that she'll sleep through the day and not want to go to sleep (again) at night.
I've been using Infacol for the past couple of days in the hope that this is caused by wind, and although she burps better and farts more, the distress is still happening.
We have no resemblance of a routine... I'm worried we're setting ourselves up for months of this. I feel completely out of control and helpless - I don't know what's upsetting her or what to do to calm her down.
I've been trying to write this for most of the day - today it has all started again after feeding her at 4pm - I've just managed to get her down now after another feed at 6 and 45 minutes of walking her around the house. She's still restless though, and I doubt I'll have much down time before it starts again.
I've spent most of today in tears, feel completely exhausted - more from the emotional tension as from lack of sleep. My back is killing me from walking her around the house and I feel sick with worry and dread of another 8 hours of it this evening...
ANY ideas out there? I don't know how many more evenings/nights of this I can cope with... It's not the sleep (I can manage without) it's the 6-8 hours of distress and crying I can't cope with.
Help...
DB
xx