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DS 5 months, no idea what I'm doing anymore

28 replies

arthymum · 05/02/2009 16:22

My DS has always been a fairly easy-going baby but last week all that changed. He screams if I try and get him to nap and has become very clingy, to the point where yesterday afternoon if I didn't maintain eye contact he lost the plot! I think he's teething but he's also ravenously hungry and I feel like I'm going round and round in circles, administering teething remedies, shoving my boob at him, fruitlessly trying to get him to nap. It's like I've lost all instinct as to what he wants and nothing works anymore. I'd been trying to go with the flow, trying to remember that everything's a phase but after days of this, by this time of day we're both now exhausted and miserable. Is this a 5 month thing? I'm exhausted.

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Maria2007 · 10/02/2009 22:12

How are you these days arthymum? Any improvement? Read this thread a bit late...

Just wanted to say, my boy was a bit like this around 4-4 and a half months. Got slightly better at 5 months & much much better at 6 months (which is his age now).

Here's what helped for us:

--doing all sorts of stuff so that he wasn't bored (yes! they do get bored more & more easily at this age, as you've identified... I find the idea of a 'babymoon' pretty alien to my experience, to be honest. My DS would go stir crazy with a babymoon, and so would I ) but if it works for some people, then that's great).

--unpopular as it is, what also really really helped with us was going from a completely unstructured, demand-feeding, laissez-faire approach to a more routiney type of approach. (Weird word: 'routiney'...but anyway back to my point!) I tried to encourage more milk in the day (did a bit more expressing too) & thus gradually his night feeding decreased. I also tried to encourage a bit of a structure in the day, by tweaking a few things here & there. 2 months down the line- now that he's 6 months- we have a much clearer routine & it's really helping, if I'm honest. I'm not rigid about it, I do make changes depending on what I want to do on particular days, but it's really nice to know what's happening during the day, to have a template in mind. And actually I really am convinced it's helped DS too.

--Finally, what also definitely helped was slightly earlier weaning. I started my DS on baby rice & some very mild fruits & veg when he was 23 & a half weeks. Now that he's 27 & a half weeks he's already on 3 (vegetable & fruit based) meals a day & that has meant he's finally started sleeping through from 10/11 until 7 in the morning. And just to say, this was a boy who up to 4 / 4 & a half months was waking every 1-2 hours at night to feed & was extremely grumpy.

Anyway. Just hope some or all of this helps! Good luck... let us know how you're doing.

FairLadyRandySlut · 10/02/2009 22:23

all that you are describing is totally normal behaviour in a child that age....growthspurt and develepmental milestones...
a nightmare ...yes....but....things will calm down again

arthymum · 11/02/2009 12:40

Thanks Maria2007 and fairladyrandyslut! Well, typically Daddy was at home on the Saturday and DS was sweetness and light and perfect naps during the day! The nights then went a bit crazy, a comparative feeding frenzy, which confirms growth spurt theory - I can almost literally see him plumping up. That has started to calm down a bit although he is still generally feeding more. Developmentally he rolled over for the first time last night and also yesterday discovered...ahem...the joys of playing with his willy. Constantly. Every time I take his nappy off! Boys will be boys... So I think there has been a lot going on in that little body and mind.

He's now much cheerier, even with a cold. I just have to remember that babies go through different phases and chill out a bit (easier said than done for first-time mother and otherwise control freak!)

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