Why does my 11 week old scream before bedtime?

[LaSoupe]

She's actually a great sleeper She generally goes through the night and only wakes for one feed in 12 hours. She wakes several times during the night but gurgles and wriggles without grumbling then goes back to sleep.

But for so e reason getting her to bed results in a screaming match every night without fail. I'm talking hysterical, blood curdling screams that she actually chokes on. I read her sleep cues, keep a consistent routine, keep everything calm before bedtime etc. but she just screams and screams until she tires herself out. I thought then maybe that she WASN'T tired and I was misreading the sleep cues so I tried letting her stay up for a bit, but that resulted in days of overtired screaming. Generally, once she is asleep and in her cot, she is fine, but sometimes she cries and I have to lift her out and go through the whole thing again.

Any ideas?

It’s witching hour/purple crying/whatever you want to call it. Evening screamies is really common for newborns. I’m not sure it’s ever been fully proved why they do it, but it’s thought to be due to their propensity to get easily overstimulated and overtired during the day. How does she nap during the day? My one piece of advice is, if you do a bath as part of the bedtime routine, ditch it. That used to be far too overstimulating for DS and the screaming would be much worse.

It’ll pass by 6 months, probably more like 4-5. Hang in there x

Babies suffer from stomachache in the evening. The best way I found was laying down on my bed and laying my baby on her stomach on top, skin to skin. Tiresome but stopped the screams quicker.

My son did this for weeks form around 2/3 weeks until about 13 weeks I think. When did it start?

It’s really stressful but I found there was nothing really that I could do to help and read that it was normal so just got through it every day. He did it from 8-11pm, could set your watch by it 🤣🙈

I didn’t bother doing a bedtime routine until he grew out of it and would stay up until it passed for the night with DH and myself taking turns to comfort him.

I guess I can't really complain as it's an hour at most but usually maybe only 10 or 15 minutes. It's just that she only starts screaming when she sees the sleep cues - I'm sure she is just resisting sleep rather than any physical reason for it. I guess she could be overstimulated. But I guess it's normal then? Thanks, everyone!

I think it’s normal!