Hysterical baby - please help!

[PenguinJunk]

My DS is 9 months old (was born 7 weeks prem, so 7.5 months corrected). He's always been a dreadful sleeper but currently he's going into meltdown several times in the night and I'm at my wits end.

He just wakes up and starts screaming and doesn't seem to be able to stop himself. He's screaming himself hoarse. Sometimes taking him outside works, sometimes singing works, but sometimes nothing works and I keep getting to the point where I really think I might kill him.

I don't rush to him as soon as he makes a peep and he used to be able to settle himself to sleep.

He has been pushing teeth through, but most came through without these hysterics. Instead, they started a few days after a bought of food poisoning. This happened several months ago and seemed to occur as the result of an HV trying controlled crying with him. That time I could only cope by carrying him around in a sling. Now he's too big for that.

Please, before I do something very terrible, can you give me some advise?

my DS is 7.5months also and we just had our first night of lots of screaming (he has been a great sleeper since about 2 months so its a bit of a shock). Am pretty sure its teething so know it is finite which helps. Can't imagine what it must be like to go through this every night. What worked last night (twice) was, after calpol, some water, lots of huggung, singing and shhing a tomy star shaped thing that plays a lullaby and has a light show that plays on the ceiling. never used it much cos I thought it would keep him awake but seems to have done the trick here. it has a 10 min timer thing that seems long enough to get him off. Obviously very early days. really hope things get better for you

I took DS to docs today but she could find no obvious problem. She gave script for ranitidine but DS was so bad today I've not had chance to get to chemist. He's had 3 major meltdowns in the day. I really think he's desperately over-tired. He had a very long (for him) morning nap and two shorter naps today. The meltdowns came after the shorter naps. He also had several bad nappies so something else is disagreeing (DH made a mistake with formula mix this morning as he was unable to put DS down to make breakfast - possibly the culprit!)..

Tonight, I gave him calpol before bed and I'm going to put him on breast as soon as dummy starts to fail to comfort him and just cuddle him lots. I'll see how safe I feel bringing him in bed, maybe not take one set of tabs.

My lovely neighbour said to just bring him over day or night if I have too much. DH is back at work now so I'm alone for next few days/nights.

Urgh, DS just had a big scream in his sleep while I wrote this. Really freaks me.