Bedtime - what are we doing wrong?

[LittleMissLottie]

Our little daughter is 15 weeks old. She has cried most evenings since being born, from about 6pm. She is a little angel in the day (mostly!)Once she finally settles - usually about 8-9pm, she is fine for the night.

Depending on the crying, we give her a bath which calms her down, then a bottle of EBM in her cot. She drinks most of it but then starts crying. Sometimes she will have a glup or 2 then cry, sometimes a lot more than that, then cry. We pick her up, burp her, she gives a huge one sometimes, then sometimes we use the Gripe Water to get it out. She has infacol before every feed.

She has an umbilical hernia which, even though we have been told shouldnt be a problem, we can hear her tummy gurgling like mad before the scream.

We put the crying down to colic/wind, were using a combination of infacol and gripe water to try and sort that, but had hoped that she would have started to grow out of it by now. It did get better around week 12, but we've now had another 2 weeks of screaming every night, and the only thing that placates her is being walked round the garden upright on our shoulders.

Anyone got any ideas? Think we are slowly going insane in the garden here.

What happens if you feed her upright?

She wont take the bottle upright, she also refuses the breast upright. We started using the bottle in the cot so that we didnt have to transfer her too - she seems to be one of those babies that doesnt like being put down - aka velcro!

Is she propped up in the cot with the bottle balanced on something?

I think my only other suggestion would be to do the bottle before the bath, and try and help her sleep without the bottle

We have the cot propped and we are holding it for her - she seems to feed okay lying down in the day no problem, just the final feed before sleep is a problem. The bottle seems to be the cue for her to sleep - have we set up a bad association maybe?

My first baby was windy, my second baby had colic - and trust me, you'd know if she had colic!
Your dd sounds like my ds. He was just very gripey and unsettled for a period of 2 hours or so every evening - we used to call it witching hour.
I used to bath then breastfeed then put him down, and the more we practiced doing that the better he became at being put down, and soon he went down without a whimper. We bought a little music box to play when we put him down, and he fell asleep listening to that.
The key is putting her down awake, sleepy and fed and do the same thing every night. The only problem with the bottle is that it lets in more air so can be worse for wind. Don't worry about her associating the bottle with bedtime, though. When she's older you'll be able to read a story and brush her teeth before she goes down, but there's plenty of time before then - she's too little for bad habits.

Brilliant - that gives me hope! She was still unsettled and cried when we put her down when I used to breastfeed her last thing at night, but think I will go back to that and stop the bottle and see what happens. How long did it take your DS to become more settled?

I can't remember! It was the most important thing in the world at the time. DD (who had colic) slept on us from 7pm until we went to bed until she was about 14 weeks. She literally couldn't lie flat at that time of the night. She was quite unsettled around 17-18 weeks, but that was around the time she started going down at 7pm. She's now 7mo and goes down without a peep.
We swaddle ds and have been putting dd down on her front since she could roll at around 4.5mo.
Time is a healer - even the most colicky babies sort themselves out in the end. Sometimes it takes as long as 6mo, but usually by 4mo the digestion has settled down.