Good stories needed about babies who cry a lot

[kbaby]

Has anyone got anything that may cheer me up slightly and give me something to look forward to. DD is 4 weeks old and ever since birth has cried a lot. Even in the hospital she wouldnt allow me to put her down and seemed far more unsettled than other babies. She seems very hard to settle and will cry at the slightest thing. She wakes up and cries and it can take 30 minutes to calm her down and if she is left alone for 5 minutes while I make dinner or go to the loo she cries so much she can be sick and is inconsolable. No amount of rocking/walking etc calms her down. We have now resorted to the dummy(see other thread) as this does seem to help. I dont know what to do for the best even DP cant calm her down. Its only since weve seen other babies who seem to sleep a lot and dont cry that we have realised that we obvisouly have a difficult baby.
Does anyone have anything that may give me some hope that it wont last forever!!!

Are you sure she isn't colicky?

MY DS was a crier if I left him for a moment, also very colickly screamer until about 9 weeks.
His sleeping was awful, I fed him through the night 2-3 times til he was 15 months, then it was a bit of tough love, he is now 10, he became a better sleeper at 2.5, happier and less moaning, but as an older child he has been a source of pure delight.
Someone told me (and this got me through sometimes) that some babies do not need sleep, theya re brighter than average and have bigger fish to fry...
Certainly rung true with my DS... even if it is bollocks it still helps

Im not sure if its colic. How would I tell? She is very windy. I assumed that colic only happened in the evening and the baby would cry non stop. DD seems to cry off and on throughout the day and unless stopped early enough it turns into a marathon session of crying.

Colick can happen at any time of the day, not just evening. The usual symptoms are drawing the knees up and signs of pain. It is more common with bottle feeding. Maybe you can ask your HV.

My babies never had it, but I had a friend whose baby had it and hers would be very on and off like yours. She used infacol or something, which was just a couple of drops in the milk, and it worked really well. Changing the bottle teat can help too.

my ds2 had colic all day every day, even when breast fed, so its possible. try colief drops.

Kbaby {hugs{}}. Sounds like you are having a hard time and I can really sympathise. My dd sounded like yours and she suffered from colic. It went when she hit 3 months but she remained a very clingy baby afterwards for a long time. I must admit I really didn't enjoy her baby time However now she is 3.5 yrs she is great, very confident and sociable. I wonder on retrospect if she could have benefited from seeing a Crainal osetopath as I had a very difficult birth with her, and wonder if this affected her temperament. My friends ds was an unputdownable baby and she swears he was transformed after a few sessions.

Ds was colicky too. You might this thread here helpful. I think GeorginaA and I must have tried everything going between us Ds is now 10 weeks and he is getting so much better with bringing up his wind. I also took him to a crainal osteopath and I would say it did help. He is now much better and quite happy to lie on his mat or sit in his chair. It does get better...

dd1 had colic usually in the evenings but sometimes she would be colicky in the day. We used infacol with her but to be honest I don't remember it making all that much of a difference. DD1 was breastfed until she 10 weeks old and the colic stopped at 12 weeks.

Dd2 has been quite windy as well but not quite as bad as dd1 we were recommended Windy-pops that you get from the Health food shop. It's worked wonders with her It has fennel in it which I think I read somewhere is supposed to calm babies. Now that your dd is 4 weeks old you can also use gripe water for colic.

Message withdrawn

My dd cried lots and lots from birth. My ds rarely cried so I really wasn't used to it. I eventually put her to sleep on her tummy and finally had reflux diagnosed at 5 months. She is now 19 mo. and sleeps through the night. She has now substituted screeching for crying, but at least this is associated with something concrete (like my not getting her breakfast ready fast enough). My mother said I was the same as a baby. She was sure I was going to be a problem child (I wasn't). Good luck. I know how exhausting it can be. But it does get better.

Kbaby,I know iiiit feels like an eternity but she is only 4 weeks old... so pretty much still new born... so maybe she's getting overstimulated?
tbqh- I still don't understand colic- think it is a catch all term for anything and everything! My dd(1) was a nightmare baby, went through everything possible to try and stop the miserable state- was even told (not v helpfully) by health visitor that some babies don't like being babies!!!!!!
Anyhow dd is now 5... she is still a "sensitive" child but it is much better!! I'm sure you won't have to wait 5 years!!!!

kbaby you have all my sympathy, I know how awful this is. My DS had colic from 1 week until 12 weeks, he used to cry everyevening for about 2 hours but he was also difficult in the day, I could NEVER put him down to sleep. I used to have to carry him everywhere. A dummy definitely helped him (for the first 6 weeks he would only suck my little finger which was awful).

I used to talk to other mothers of newborns and think "what is going on?" everyone elses child seemed to sleep all the time and have that kind of awake/asleep state where they are half awake and half asleep by DS never had that he was either asleep (not often!) or wide awake. Really, really hard and if you've not been through it you can have no conception of how hard it is. We tried everything and the only thing that helped was cranial osteopathy, this really did make a difference. see here for further info
cranial osteopathy . There are also some other threads on this if you search. See in particular GeorginaA's thread.
support for crying babies

And the good news - babies like this make the easiest toddlers. So many of my friends had laid back babies, sleeping through from 12 weeks, blah blah. When they turned into toddlers it was pay back time
whereas, quite frankly, if you've dealt with an unsettled, colicky newborn, toddler tantrums are nothing. I can't believe how much I love DSs company now but I look back with a shiver of dread on when he was newborn.
Sorry, rambling now, just wanted to say that I really know how awful it is and how it feels like forever, do you have anyone who could look after dd for an hour or so just so you can get some rest?
keep posting too.

Totally agree with katierocket on the baby/toddler thing. I carried my dd everywhere for weeks on end and she was a very 'difficult' baby but is now a lovely 2 1/2 year old. In fact, I looked at a video of her in her first three months the other day and it brought a shiver...those were very difficult times and seemed endless at the time but they did end and things got loads better. I actually ended up withdrawing completely from speaking to other mums as I couldn't relate to their experiences at all but this was a mistake as I just got sadder and sadder.

IT WON'T LAST FOREVER!!

kbaby, I can really sympathise. My first was a total crying nightmare. She started crying the minute she was born (unsettling all the babies on the labour ward!) and didn't stop for months. She was breastfed for around 10 weeks and then after that, I just couldn't continue and she was put onto Nutramigen and she was much happier. She used to cry all day and most of the night!

Anyway, to echo what katierocket/clayhead have said she is now (aged 3) the easiest toddler I know. So sweet, helpful and calm - in fact, we hardly even got any tantrums at 2 - I'm sure she had cried herself out as a baby!

My second was the easiest baby - loads of sleep, hardly any crying. Now aged 2 he is the most difficult child I know - in fact, I find it much harder dealing with him than I did with a crying baby because he is much bigger and stronger and no matter how loud you think a crying baby is, a screaming toddler is much worse!

I know this probably doesn't help you now but to be honest, I can hardly remember how bad the first 4 months were with dd because now she is so lovely it just seems totally out of character.

My dd cried inconsolably every evening except when I fed her, which meant I basically fed her every 20 minutes from the age of about 4 weeks to 12 weeks. Every supper time the only way I could eat was to feed her at the same time, so I'd drape napkin over her, plonk her on a cushion and try to eat with one hand. I made my dp only ever cook things I could eat whilst doing the feeding!

3 months was a real turning point - from then on she turned into the most even-tempered, calm, easily pleased baby.

Hope it improves soon.

kbaby, you have my every sympathy. I too had a crying baby (ds now 3) who cried from 2.5 weeks until he was about 16 weeks. He had colic and no amount of infacol, gripe water, rocking, pushing in his pram, etc cured it. It was something we just had to endure. This will be a really trying time for you, but I doubt it will last long... the time passes so quickly. FWIW he turned into a fantastically easy baby and generally good little boy. HTH to know you're not alone LMBx

It won't last! But in the meantime, make the most of the dummy and maybe get a swing. Some unsettled babies really love these and it might give you some hands-free time. I just think some babies take longer to adjust to being born and for them the combination of swaddling, swinging and sucking is a bit of a miracle.

kbaby, much sympathy! I remember those days well - my dd1 (who will be 5 next month) was a total nightmare for the first 4 months. She screamed and whinged and cried all day (& night) long it seemed (though we eventually bought a swing which did help). Things did get better, first at four months, and then again some improvement when she became mobile at 6 months. She's been a happy child ever since, and yes, she was a pleasant toddler, too.
It's sad when things don't really turn out how you imagine them and for those first months with dd I felt that having got pregnant had been A Very Bad Idea... but really, in the hopefully not too distant future you will see improvement.

my ds was such a good baby who hardly ever cried and so i think i just was not prepared for dd. for the first two weeks of her life she screamed all night every night. my c scar was so painful that i could hardly do anything. my mom could only stay with us for two weeks and then after that it was just me and the two kids. the very same night my mom left dd slept properly waking up for her feeds every 3 hours or so and for two weeks it was blissful. then at 4 weeks old she started sleeping through the night and screaming all day, every day! this continued and i tried everything, dummies (she wouldnt have one), infacol, gripe water, anti colic bottles, different milk, but none of these worked. then, suddenly at 3 months it stopped. for about a week it gradually got better until things were fine. shes five months now and generally quite good although if she's in a grump then it doesnt take much to set her off! at the time its horrible but you kind of forget it afterwards i find. i feel a lot closer to her now we can have nice times together without her just being red faced and wailing all the time!

kbaby ...
I haven't read all the posts but I wanted to tell you that my DS came out screaming and carried on for what seemed like eternity ... He had a few health issues and by the time those were sorted out it was almost like he was used to crying. I hated it and whenever he started crying it used to go right through me ... in the end I just had to leave him to get on with it and put him in a safe place (like his cot) and shut some doors between him and me so that I could go and make a cup of tea and have a breather.
FWIW he is a lovely 4 year old now (well, apart from normal 4 year old 'stuff' ) ... and to be honest I think it was his only way of communicating then. He never stops talking now, he wakes up talking, talks all day and is still talking one minute before he falls asleep. In fact, he talks in his sleep .
Also FWIW one screamer doesn't mean that all your babies will be screamers ... DD only ever cries when she is hungry, tired or lonely ... and because I never let her get hungry or lonely and she sleeps well she very rarely cries ...
HTH ...
Hugs ... hang in there, it will get better ... promise!

PS .. as I haven't read the replies I don't know if anyone mentioned silent reflux at all ... My friend's baby cried a lot until silent reflux was diagnosed at 10 weeks. He was then put on medication and he improved almost overnight!