4 week old how to settle!

[loopyloutoo]

I know there's probably no answer to this, but I'm going to ask anyway cos I'm so exhausted by it 🙈

Almost 4 week old every evening around 7pm will kick off - arching back, arms and legs kicking and flinging around and crying. Will stop crying if held but within minutes will arch back/go taut and start again.

Baby hasn't had great dirty nappies, MW and HV advised a small amount of cooled boiled water for this and it's worked well. No dirty nappy since yesterday morning, I feel like they are uncomfortable over this.

We have tried infacol and colief, no major difference evident. I can't put them down to settle, it never works so I always need to lift and hold until it passes. We are doing shifts upstairs now to try to settle her.

During the day she is a little dream, eating and sleeping. We have tried to differentiate between night and day by getting her out during the day but I feel limited in what else I can do?

Should have said HV is very happy with her weight and centile and as a result does not suspect reflux or silent reflux

Totally normal. Hold your baby. Known as the witching hours in our house. It passes.

I found gripe water helped my little girl poo and helped to settle her along with dentinox colic drops.. with the gripe water I’d just put 2.5ml in one of her bottles and she would usually poo by her next bottle so used it once a day but sometimes didn’t have to and I put dentinox in most of her bottles she’s slept through from being about 2 month old, but she was the same was amazing through the day and a terror when it got to bed time

Unfortunately I do think this sounds normal!
It does pass but honestly the best thing is to just hold them. Around 12 weeks mine were a bit more settled each night.

You can work on your desired sleeping habit when they're a bit bigger.

I won't go into detail but both my babies were held to sleep/fuss/sleep for the evening stretch for up to about 12 weeks. The first continued to need varying levels of support and my second gets less because I'm busy with his brother and that's just how it has to be.

They'll fit in so don't worry about creating bad habits etc just now.

Also meant to add infacol made my second DS constipated. First was absolutely fine but anecdotally I have heard constipation can be a side effect.

I think it’s just about holding them and taking the cue from them at this age!

Still very little and this won’t be forever.

Ah op my lo started this about that age his wind was shocking. Can I ask how you're feeding? I was bf and found reducing my dairy intake specifically cows milk made a noticeable difference. He was gaining great and well up in the centiles for height and weight but he had reflux and I found a soother helped him at night as well the sucking seemed to keep things down. I also had a really fast letdown and bit of an over supply so that affected his latch and meant he was gulping to keep up. So I took him off every time I was starting to let down until that finished or if I heard him gulping and just expressed into a muslin. That really helped with the wind. You could also look into tongue tie if his latch isn't deep. If you're feeding with a bottle you could maybe look into paced feeding if you haven't already or at dairy free formula if you're using it? Not sure if any of that's helpful but just incase!

I found a bath sometimes was the best thing for settling ds and we tried a tummy tub as well though I don't know that it made any difference compared to the bath. Also found wonky winding technique helped and I tend to feed him lying on his left hand side in the evening as then he burps while he's feeding but again that depends on how you're feeding. He's getting much much better now he's 13wks it doesn't last forever. Best thing you can do I find is tap out when you need to. There's been nights where he's been inconsolable and I've had to go downstairs and let dh take over for an hour and then swap again because it's really hard listening to them that distressed for a long period.

P.s I also found that when nothing else was working I stripped us both off and put him inside my dressing gown and lay propped up on the bed with him on my chest for skin to skin and that tended to calm him down pretty well. Might be worth a try?

I disagree this doesn’t sound normal, at 4 weeks they should be having at least 2 poo’s a day - are they breast or formula fed? They should be referring to the infant feeding team, not recommending water which is really bad for newborns and not the correct advice.