Here I am again!!! Her tummy is gurgling and rumbling all the time again and she keeps waking!!

[pevie]

sorry here i go again. My 8 mth old has been unsettled from beginning. Stomach problems, vomiting initially (but no more), wind, constipation, general fussiness and not sleeping. She goes through slightly more settled periods (although not brilliant I have to say) and then will get really bad again. I have noticed that when she is up more during the night, her tummy gurgles and rumbles more. Anyone experience this and what do you think it is? Hospital said reflux and gave her meds but no difference. I have also tried cranial osteopathy, cutting out dairy, baby massage, etc. etc. Recently read something about baby probiotics being good for this (although with much younger babies) so am trying this. thoughts please......

how long was she on meds for, and what were they?

my DS had silent reflux and it really affected his sleep - he was on meds for 5 months

if there is an underlying health issue then she won't sleep well until it is sorted out whether by a GP or complementary methods

She was on gaviscon, ranitidine, losec. We didnt feel there was a significant improvement so took her off, although we are back seeing the consultant paediatrician tomorrow. He is pretty rubbish though. I do feel there is an underlying issue, but given that meds for reflux had limited impact am not sure what this is. We have been giving gripe water a lot more recently, could this create more gurgling do you think?

me again. no further advice other than ime sometimes you need to stick at things for a lot longer than you think. oh, and we used probiotics (which i don't think can do any harm at the very least)
as i have said previously, i don't think any one thing particularly helped or hindered when my ds was suffering similarly. i also always felt that something underlying was being missed by the gastro paed and i still have no idea what the problem was. but it did pass.

Thanks zonedout. You have probably had the most similar experience to ourselves in that you tried so many things that didnt work. NOt sure if your LO's symptoms were worse than ours or not. Tell me again what they were. Also, most importantly, tell me the story of how things got better and how this changed your life or not, as need to believe this will happen. Was it gradual? What age is LO now and how do they sleep? What is your gut instinct about what underlying problem was?

ok pevie, will try and make some kind of sense but have had a long couple of days and so much is so hazy now so bear with me while i waffle through...
ds (nearly 23 months) was an extremely unsettled baby from the start (had a fairly but not desperately taumatic birth involving ventouse/cord snapping off/coming out blue & not breathing etc which i still believe played some part). he would literally scream for hours on end, day and night. he had extremely bad wind, could only ever sleep in a fully upright position (either on dh or myself or in his car seat to give us occasional respite), tilting his cot was never enough. he never went in his pram, i had to wear him in a sling when out. most of it seemed to be about doing a poo or passing wind... straining and screaming all night until he would finally do a poo (occassionally streaked with blood) in the small hours and then pass out for an hour or so (max). the ongoing sleep deprivation was like living torture... he was diagnosed with silent reflux and multiple food intolerances by a paediatric gastroenterologist and put on gaviscon (which made him so much worse) and ranitidine (which did nothing) he and his dietician kept insisting i stop bf but i refused, whilst cutting out loads from my diet... things deteriorated (including my relationship with dh) to the point where he was admitted to hospital at about 9 months for naso gastric feeding as he was by this point falling off the bottom of the growth charts having started well above average and really not thriving at all. and all the while he would sleep in 30 to 45 minute cycles before waking up screaming again... to cut a very long story short i began to seriously question the advice we had been given by all these 'specialists' and started listening more to my own instincts about what to feed etc... i took him off all meds, tried to relax about he whole pressure i felt on children sleeping through etc and slowly but surely things gradually began to improve by themselves at about 12 months. i truly believe that for some reason some babies guts just take a little/ a lot longer to mature. i also believe that, in our case, a fairly stressful birth played a part. and i am convinced that nothing but time really helped... the year mark coincided with starting to walk and therefore being constantly upright too. and now, just over a year on from our lowest point (hospitalisation) i am blessed with a little boy who is extremely happy and thriving. he is, touch wood, a good weight, and can eat everything (when he so chooses). he is still a fairly abysmal sleeper by most standards (wakes once a night, ends up in our bed) but that is good enough for me and i actually feel very lucky compared to where we were. hope this helps a little... have no doubt missed out loads of detail but wanted to reply with something tonight. oh and just to add we tried cranial osteopathy, massage, baby yoga...

btw, they never did tube feed him in the end... a different consultant to the usual paed who had admitted him appeared (after the nurse prepared us psychologically for it) and put a stop to it...talk about inconsistent care...
also, this sounds crazy (which i definitely am) but on the extremely odd occassion ds sleeps through (maybe once every couple of months) i now worry that something is wrong and actually miss him in our bed...
god i'm rambling.

Thanks for that zonedout. Sounds horrendous. I think there are some similarities but you probably had it a lot worse. DD2 always did that 35-45 minute thing too which has driven us insane since the beginning, as meant she didnt nap well, always woke up after going down for night and if at all unsettled would do the same thing. At her worst she got up every hour or so and we felt like walking zombies, usually at some point in middle of night we might have to do the upright thing. However, we had two saving graces I think, in that we had an Ambi Baby Nest for first 5 months which I think helped. You could quite often rock her back to sleep in it and it seemed to settle her, which I think created some reasonable habits. But as she got bigger, it didnt work well at all and she started waking more and more. Then the only thing that seemed to help her sleep for a few hours (including the odd 4-5 hour stretch) was putting her on her stomach. We are now doing this fairly regularly and as long as shes not too uncomfortable or sore, it can help. We were at hospital today and they have advised total dairy free (I have tried it before but maybe not totally strict) so will give it one last go. They have also done enema on her and her large intestine didnt work v.well, so mentioned testing her for some sort of 'disease' where this can happen, but paed.thinks she will probably just grow out of it. She doesnt scream much in day now, although like your LO can be very uncomfortable when trying to poo and also with wind in night!!!!!! You become obsessed dont you.

But here is good news, bizarrely last night, she woke at about 8.30 then not again till 1. Fed her then she lasted till 6. Like a miracle, felt brilliant today. What we have changed in last few days is: giving infacol, gripe water and probiotic. May be a fluke, but lets hope!!!!!!

the hourly wake ups really are torture... my ds always managed to time it just as i was finally falling asleep. but actually your last post reminds me of two things... the tricks that worked for us always eventually stopped working (one of the longterm failsafes was walking up and down the stairs continuously with him... this became dh's job and he developed thighs (and buns) of steel)... and the second is that ds would almost always settle well on his stomach (which i rarely let him do as i had slight pnd which incorporated an extreme fear of sids). oh and another thing was that every time i reached my lowest point where i just felt absolutely desperate and unable to carry on, he would suddenly sleep a little better for a couple of nights.

that sounds positive (but grim) that they have done an enema... at least they are doing something pro-active... my paed seemed so blinkered with the reflux thing that he diagnosed it and was unwilling to listen to my doubts and concerns about our ongoing problems (and my hunch that there was something more going on)

the easier thing for me is that ds is my first so i only had him to think about in my sleep deprived haze whereas you also have your dd1 which must be so tough for you. on the other hand i am extremely broody but absolutely terrified of going through all that again...

i have everything crossed that things are on the up for you now...keep us posted.

Oh thank you zoned out, I feel you are going through this with us!!!! Friends and family have tried to be helpful, but it is really hard for them to understand this fully never having gone through it. The worst any of my friends had was an unsettled Lo up until about 6 mths, so when we went past that landmark, felt truly alone!!!! Also, our experience with DD1 was pretty standard, a few ups and downs but usually settled after a bit, so this was a HUGE shock. There are pros and cons to it being our second. Cons are that I feel that it has also been a huge stress on DD1 and I really miss all the time I used to be able to spend with her (she had night terrors for months and months after it all started), I feel i'm missing a really lovely time in her life (shes 3) but pro is that DD1 keeps us sane and even makes us laugh sometimes, also we probably would have been really scared like you to do it again, so at least we will now have our 2 lovely girls. I read a book about reflux (colic) that said it was best form of birth control but also said that it wasnt always case that next child went on to have these problems ( I think chances are fairly small), also if worst did happen, you would know so much more, so could maybe bypass some of the rubbish. I think your case sounds really extreme and it would be very, very bad luck if it happened again!!!! But I know exactly how you feel, when people joke about us doing it again, we just know that they havent a clue!!!!!!!!