DS & Night cramps - any advice/explanation ?

[74slackbladder]

My DS 4.5 seems to regularly wake with 'pain' in his leg/foot, it wakes him up, he can't get rid of it on his own, so me or DH have to go and rub/massage foot till its gone away, then he struggles to get back to sleep and works himself up in to a state.
It has been happening for a while now - maybe 6 months and there seems to be no rhyme or reason to when it happens, but it's pretty disruptive to all our sleep, so am looking for what we can do to get past it and/or an explanation

Growing pains - my 5yo DS gets these and we do massage or sometimes calpol. Something warm on the feet like a hot water bottle helps ease it too.

I 2nd growing pains! My 3yo gets them every few months. We too massage her leg (always the knee on the same leg) and give her calpol.

My brother suffered with them for years when he was younger and is now 6ft 2!!

As I suspected. Thanks. Had not considered giving calpol, but I will have it to hand for next time it happens!

DS1 has always suffered from these for as long as I can remember - he is now 5. It sometimes happens early evening before he is in bed or in the middle of the night and it is always in his 'leg' (he cannot be more specific) and it is not always the same leg.

Like your DS, he cannot calm himself down when the pain strikes and the only thing that works is calpol and cuddles/massages from me and eventually he goes back to sleep - it happens maybe once a month so not really a big deal and me and DH have always assumed they are growing pains.

DS2 doesn't seem to have the same problem!

My ds had cramps on and off for ages in legs and even in the muscles b/w his ribs and around chest, what has helped is magnesium (Mg deficiency has also shown up in the nutritionist hair test). It can be due to the fact that dairy products have a lot of calcium but hardly any magnesium and the 2 need to balance. Painkillers might help short term but won't fix the imbalance.

We use interchangeably epsom or dead sea salts in the bath, tissue salts (mag phos) or Mg supplement.