7 week old thrashing, straining and wailing in sleep

[MissMitten]

Hello. My gorgeous 7 week old has been suffering from some kind of digestive problem for the past week or so. He goes to sleep around 8pm and sleeps peacefully until about 2am when he starts thrashing around, straining and wailing. It sounds horrendous! But he seems to sleep through it. However, it's very hard for me to sleep while this is going on. As he seems to be asleep I try to ignore the noises, but can't help getting up every hour or so to check on him. Sometimes I think I wake him up by turning on the light, but am not sure if he was awake anyway. The doc says it is colic and has prescribed Infacol, which we started on last night. If anything, it seems worse, although I know Infacol is meant to take a few days to take effect.

Have others experienced similar? How long does this go on for? Days? Weeks? Months? Any tips for coping? Also, I'm worried that I am missing his normal crying sounds, and therefore feeding cues, amid all the colicky wailing. Should I try and feed him if he seems to be awake?

Thanks!

I've no real experience of this but I didn't want your post to go unanswered. You say he sleeps peacefully from 8pm till 2am. That's six hours and seeing as he is only 7 weeks old maybe after six hours he is waking from hunger pains? Maybe you should try to feed him even if he is asleep (called a dream feed or something?) Does he have this problem in the day after feeding? I'm sorry I don't know what else to suggest but I hope he gets better soon

Thanks for the reply. He does it during the day, too, increasingly, so I don't think it's hunger pains. I'm pretty sure it's digestive straining. But I agree that 6 hours seems long for his age, so have been waking him up to feed as I'm worried that he is going hungry. The doc wasn't sure about that tactic as I could be stopping him sleeping through if he wants to, but I'd rather that than him not getting enough food. He goes back to sleep again quickly anyway.

Hi, if you are bf-ing I would advise a food diary and then just keep a record for a week. My son had cow's milk allergy and it was coming through in my milk. As soon as I cut out dairy all was well.

My ds used to do similar when he was a small baby, with him i found it was wind (of the bottom variety). When he started wailing etc I used to get his legs and bend them so his knees were going up towards his tummy and hold them there until he settled. It seemed to help the pain/discomfort and sometimes a poof of wind would be released Not sure if this is the problem with your lo but maybe worth a go.

Oh my goodness - santaslilhelper I tried your trick and it worked! Three baby farts in a row. Really good fun as well as relieving his discomfort. Thanks for that!

My little girl did this in the evenings so we changed her milk to Aptamil for colic and constipation and she was a different baby after a few days. Sorry no help if you're breastfeeding however you could try Colief mixed with some expressed milk?? Both these breakdown the lactose that little tummies find hard to tolerate sometimes xx

Oh yay! just seen your post, really pleased to hear it helped :)

In case anyone else looks at this thread to find answers to the same problem: basically, he just grew out of it in the end, by about 12 weeks. Colief did seem to help a bit, but the faff of having to express breastmilk to add it to before every feed was too much for me - especially in the middle of the night and first thing in the morning! Oh, and almost impossible to do when out and about. I got through it by using earplugs at night in the end!