is it colic or am i starving my dd :(

[bgt]

my dd is 6 weeks old, a hungry baby. i bf her during the day and night but her 10pm feed is ebm or formula. for the last 3 weeks she has been awful in the evenings from 6pm till her next feed. i am not sure whether it is colic or that she is hungry. i do put her on my breast most of the evening but she is still unhappy and normally cries herself to sleep. someone said for it to be colic she needs to cry continously for 3 hours which she doesn't. i am getting mixed signals from her and not sure if hunger cry or colic. can anyone help??

It's quite normal if really tough. It may not be colic - just your baby building up your supply.

If she's growing ok, getting plenty of wet and dirty nappies you are NOT starving her. She may not even be a hungry baby - just normal feed-feed-feed patterns which will pass soon.

Why are you giving the top up? You may find it better to just keep her feeding all evening, swapping back and forth several times.

we had a similar thing with our 6 week old a week ago. It seemed like she was crying with hunger and suckling / feeding to build up my milk supply as she's fine now. It was tough at the time and I was tempted to top up with formula but resisted. Pleased that i didn't move to formula as i'm sure i would have given up bf. hang on in there, it's likely to pass quickly although if you are concerned she's unwell, it's worth a trip to the GP.

If it's roughly the same time of day and there's no settling her and she won't take food, it may be colic.
We tried infacol and gripe water with our DD but nothing worked... We have now taken her to a cranial ostepath and has done the trick! May be worth considering. HTH.

Really your doing so well, its most likely colic, its so hard in those early days, my dd is 17 weeks and it feels like omly recently bf is no longer a stress, people will tell you to top up, do this, do that, but I have found that Bfeeding really is about having courage in tour convictions... There have been so many times I have questioned it, but really your baby won't starve if she is hungry you have the milk x

Between feeds does she ever have a dummy? I swore I would never use one, but it hasn't caused her any confusion and at the end of the day babies love to suck

I could have said exactly the same about my 8 week old DS 2 weeks ago. He went through a phase exactly as you are describing being really unsettled in the evenings. We tried everything we could think of. He wouldn't take a dummy at all, didn't want a bottle which he will take readily if hungry etc etc. He would fall asleep on his dad, but not me (as I smelt of milk I guess). I spoke to my SIL about it as she has 4 children and she said she went through the same thing with all of hers at about 6 weeks too. Something to do with the 6 week growth spurt perhaps? If you look in your red book, the growth curve is really steep at 6 weeks, eg DS put on 24oz in just 12 days! So your LO is probablyjust trying to increase supply. Now DS is 8 weeks, evenings are much calmer again, so I guess the advice to ride it out may be the way forward? Not a solution that helps you this evening though I guess! Good luck