1 week old baby has a personality transplant from 7-12

[WorryMcGee]

In the day, I have a baby that’s pretty chilled out. She’ll bf and then fall asleep, we can put her down for naps, nappies seem normal according to the midwife who came yesterday and she’s only dropped 6% of her weight so they are happy with how she’s eating. When it hits about 7pm, however, she gets absolutely furious about everything and it’s impossible to sooth her. She arches her back as if she’s in pain but winding brings nothing up. She screams to the point of giving herself hiccups, skin to skin doesn’t work, basically nothing works until we get to about midnight and we’re fine again. She’ll go in her cot and wake every 2.5 ish hours for a feed, then straight back to sleep again.

We are using MAM nipple shields at the suggestion of a feeding consultant who took lots of time with us to try and get her latched on. I have flat nipples and she has a teeny tiny mouth and a high palate so her sucking reflex isn’t getting triggered. Could this be causing her to take in more air and it’s building up throughout the day or something? She absolutely will not feed without them though, I do try midway through the feed but there’s just not enough in her mouth for it to work.

I worry about allergies and/or reflux but if it was that would we have the same problems all day?

Does anyone have any ideas as to what on earth this could be?! It’s awful not being able to calm her 😥she’s our first baby (as you can probably tell!) thank you 😊

soothe* - sleep deprived typo…

sounds like clockwork colic

try giving colic medication and white noise.

The witching hour (or several hours). Standard I’m afraid. Caused by over tiredness

A few tips:

• wear her in a sling for the evening. Walk until asleep then transfer to cot after she’s slept for a couple of hours


• try to increase daytime sleep so she is less tired in the evening


• a dummy. We used one for the witching hour then ditched it at 4 months


• swaddling and Very Loud white nose - like 50 decibels, a hairdryer basically

Thank you so so much, I just googled witching hour! Will try all the suggestions, we even have a white noise machine already coming today 🙂

My DD was the same, 7-10 every night and she would scream and scream. Ended up being silent reflux ...i purchased reflux wedges for the cot and moses basket and pram. Also got the support of the GP when it went on for weeks and weeks. Started on ranitidine and i went dairy free ( i was BF)

Witching hours. Both mine did it. 7-9pm every night until about 4 months old.

What helped me was making sure I'd eaten before it started.

Then I got comfy on the sofa and with DS it was rocking him and with DD it was just letting her sit on the breast.

Once you know to expect it it's a lot less troubling.

Witching hour! We had it from around 5pm. It does pass, i promise!

I just told my husband about witching hour 😂 his face 🤣 “is there…a cure for that?”

Completely normal. Both of mine loved a good evening scream fest, used to watch TV with the subtitles on.

Very normal. As others have said it’s classic witching hour stuff. Slings and just generally giving yourself up to soothing them until it eventually passes is all you can do.

Yes, agree with other posters, witching hour! We had this also, it does end. I found that also ensuring all burps were out helped soothe my little one too. So my advise would be to pat their back as you're holding and soothing them. Best of luck! You got this xx

Classic colic - often babies get overtired and overstimulated at the end of the day when they are more aware of their own surroundings. Don't want to be picked up or put down. Show all the signs of tiredness but won't feed. It's infuriating but normal. DH used to take DS for an outdoor walk for an hour or so to give me a break, and by the time they came back DS would latch properly and have a decent feed (often returning to toad mood and hour after the feed, but still...)

Welcome to the witching hour. This is just what babies do. No one knows for sure why but a buildup of tiredness and overstimulation during the day seems most likely.

It was my DH's job to take the baby for a walk in the sling (in winter, in the dark) so I got a break. Bouncing on an exercise ball with baby in sling also worked really well. Otherwise I just hunkered down, fed and watched TV.

There are lot of things about newborns that aren't "problems" or things you can "cure" but just normal baby behaviour. You don't fix the baby. You just roll with it as best you can until the baby grows out of it.

Colic. Dentinox colic drops are a lifesaver!

Colic. Hell, but I’m convinced pacing around the house for 5 hours a day with DD in a sling (her window was 5pm - 10pm) was what got me so skinny by 3 months after she was born 😁

bracing myself for it with DS due next month. I’ve warned the neighbours this time…

Sympathy, by the way. I think my lowest moment in the newborn phase was when I googled colic and got the explanation that ‘colic is when they scream for no known reason’. I wanted to throw my phone out of the window for that ‘useful’ insight 😤

Haha wait till the teenage years. Mood wise mine are channelling their inner kid from The Exorcist

You’ve all helped us so much, we were at our wits end worrying what it could be! We have a new plan for this evening 💪🏻 Thank you xx

So this evening was so much better! We put her in her cot for a nap upstairs twice today rather than downstairs with everything going on (I may have used this to sneak naps in too…!) one was an hour before the chaos would have begun, we used white noise, then I basically sat here all evening either feeding her or letting her lie on my chest while I made a pathetic attempt at bouncing (I had c section) and we have had no tears! Hopefully this wasn’t a fluke haha. Thank you so much to everyone who posted with support and advice ❤

Infacol and the tiger hold (and lots of of trashy TV) kept my sanity with my colicky baby. It's always so much easier if you roll with it and don't have to expect to get anything else done.

Ds was the same.

Infacol saved our sanity. Weirdly, only the first two thirds of the bottle worked. It would all kick off again if the Infacol was running low.

Good luck and congrats.