Screaming Baby

[Purplecatti]

At night my five week old baby screams and screams and screams the poor little thing. I don't know why or how to comfort her.
It always starts around half nine. The theories are:

• acid reflux. She does possetting rather a lot. We've raised her crib at one end as her breathing laid on her back sounds noisy and congested. We're seeing the GP tomorrow
• she's overtired. She dozes from 3-7pm in twenty minute bursts between cluster feeds. She doesn't really nap during the day.

She tries to feed but is in too much of a state to latch on once she's got going, she goes red, has tears and claws at me whilst screaming fit to bust. I can't console her. It's terrible to hear, really frightening.
In desperation on sunday I put her on her own for ten minutes and she stopped and then ten minutes after that had a big feed and went to sleep happily but I hate the cry it out thing particularly in one so tiny.

I've tried a dark quiet room from early evening but it does nothing. from 7-9pm she's usually a bit manic, she winds herself up wiggling and gurgling which makes me thing she's overtired.

She's been screaming and clawing at me now for 40 minutes

This sounds like it might be colic. I know it's supposed to come on in the late afternoon but DD (now 6 months) had it later in the evening.

Hopefully your GP will be able to help; do come back and tell us what he/she says.

hi, I agree with fish. sounds like colic, my DS was also like this. Vicious circle struggling with colic so couldn't latch on to feed, not feeding added to the crying and the exhaustion tips the poor mite over the edge.
Baby massage and the miracle that is infacol really helped us and (touch wood) my 8week old DS has been colic free for 4weeks. I still massage him daily and give infacol before every feed. Good luck and keep us posted

Could be wind making her uncomfortable?

Never used one but my friend swears by her cranial osteopath. Worth seeing if there's one in your area.
Don't worry, it's still all very new, she will settle as she gets older.

It is really awful, dd was like that at the same age and it was exhausting and frightening and just horrible. So hard when you're tired too. I don't really know why dd screamed, she did have reflux but I'm not convinced it was just that, or wind or whatever. But it does get better, the best advice I can give is try lots of things to see if anything helps. When if got really bad with dd I'd put her in the sling and go for a walk, she'd be asleep in a few minutes and we'd all get a break. She also liked being held close and gently 'bounced' by us kind of dancing, especially if sung to at the same time. Hang in there and get as much rest as you can

well we've got ranitidine. I'm still not sure what's setting her off. She had a little episode before a nap yesterday, then at about 8pm. After she'd finished she gave me a big beaming smile though. This morning she screamed after projectile vomiting so I think it is a combination of tiredness and acid.
She is very grumpy today

We had a similar issue around 3 weeks and saw cranial osteopath, worked wonders. For the immediate future we found the hair dryer (obviously pointing away from her) calmed our dd enough for her to latch well and feed.