Regular fussing, colic, reflux or all of these things? When will it end?

[esgill]

Our daughter is 7 weeks old. For one month, I was exhausted as she was cluster feeding all the time but between feeds she was sleeping on me so I had a little time to read on my kindle/browse the internet/watch a film with my husband -- I could do this when she was feeding too.

Since about week 5, she's been SO fussy and is either asleep during the night, feeding, or crying and screaming.

For some feeds (mainly in the morning and evening) she is doing this thing at the breast where she roots to latch, unlatches and screams: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/breast_and_bottle_feeding/714061-6-week-old-screaming-at-breast-is-there-anything-i

She gets really worked up and won't feed again until we've coaxed her into sleep by swaddling her, burping her over our shoulders while walking around for about 10 minutes, rocking in the rocking chair. Usually, after all that, we lay her down on another surface and she wakes up.

She doesn't tend to do it at night and is actually sleeping and feeding quite well from about midnight/1 am through to 9 am.

She does have some reflux symptoms:

-Spit up
-Wheezing
-coughing (not a cold cough but more like she's clearing her throat)
-Hates lying on her back and only happy if upright (oddly only the case during the day, she sleeps on her back at night). We have to burp her over our shoulders and carry her in the sling all day.

We tried infacol for a week and it seemed to be making things worse.

I am exclusively breastfeeding. She is gaining weight (950 g in the last 3 weeks) so the HV and GP aren't concerned. They say if we treat her with gaviscon, omeprazole or what not it would be for symptomatic relief, but that her issues won't be causing her any harm. It's really hard though as my husband and I haven't been able to do anything in the evenings and when he is out I am non-stop trying to console a screaming baby and cannot put her down. They prescribed baby gaviscon and we haven't started using it yet. Any experience of this/did it help your baby?

Is this normal fourth trimester colic or purple crying? Or is it something we can treat? Will it get better or are we going to be non-stop holding her upright for the foreseeable?

Had this with my third child and the gaviscon helped a lot! Made me not dread feed times.

This quite useful peaks around 2 months.

Definitely try the gaviscon, also do you use a sling? Baby will be better upright after a feed, it will help the milk to stay down. A lot of very young babies are uncomfortable lying flat. A sling that holds her upright will free you up to do other stuff.

My baby has reflux (still on medication at 7 months). She also had the most horrific colic from 6 weeks til 4 months. From 2-4 months it was absolute hell. Pure hell. I was on my feet 85% of my waking hours, with her in the sling. Just walking. My feet, legs everything were agony. BUT.. one day she woke up a completely different baby!

If is so incredibly shit. But trust me, it does just disappear all of a sudden. My girl hated life, but the last 3 months has been such a happy, smiley, giggly lovely lovely baby! I hope yours passes quicker, as sometimes it stops at 3 months xx

@climbershell thanks for sharing -- what were your baby's symptoms? And what medication did your baby take? Did it help? We've been prescribed gaviscon, going to see if it helps as infacol seemed to only make things worse. If this doesn't work they will prescribe omeprazole. I wasn't sure if reflux or colic or both. Promising that it does end...

It sounds a lot like my daughter especially the pulling off and screaming during a feed.

We got she is gaining fine but she moved up from 9th to 35th percentile after I went dairy and soya free.

My daughter has food allergies that caused reflux and reflux. She reached a peak at 4 months when she cried for 20h a day was in my arms for 23h a day. Our GP was undertreating her reflux and told me it absolutely couldn't be allergies. We saw a paediatrician he doubled her reflux treatment and suggested going dairy and soya free. We had such an improvement within a week or two.

My daughter is now 3 and still has reflux that isn't controlled by medication. It has damaged her molars. My mum has reflux which was uncontrolled by medication for 15 years and caused significant damage to her oesophagus. Reflux in young babies won't go on for long enough to cause damage but just because the doesn't make in impact on the outside symptoms of reflux it might be making a difference internally. Reflux treatment turned my daughter from a very unhappy mostly silent refluxer to a "happy spitter". Over time the unhappy silent reflux return and we have had issues managing this but my daughter has particularly stubborn reflux

@Superscientist I'm already dairy free because we're vegan. I don't have soya much so not sure that would be causing it. What treatment did you get for reflux? We are now trying gaviscon but it's hard to give it her...

@MissyB1 as said in my post we already use the sling and it's one of the only places where she is comfortable! That and swaddling paired with movement.

@Ascubudr did you experience this too?

@mintich reassuring! What were your babies symptoms and when did you stop needing to give gaviscon?

My son was crying before during and after feeds. His burps sounded sore! He was just always unsettled. Gaviscon helped a lot!
He stopped needing it when he could sit up as wind comes up naturally. I also weaned him around this time. Food was a game changer!

Oh he would also bring up some milk with his burps

Unfortunately with allergies if there is any in your diet and they react through breastfeeding it will be enough to cause a reaction. My daughter is also allergic to tomatoes and to test if there was any amount she could tolerate in my diet I had a barely visible amount on a sandwich and she reacted and cried for 2 days.

They can react to any foods too. My daughter has a lot of food allergies and some of the foods I had to remove were tomatoes, aubergines and coconut! On top of the more standard dairy soya and eggs.
I kept and food and symptom diary for a few weeks and showing the paediatrician this helped us get on the allergy path so I think I would recommend you did the same to see if there are any patterns pay close attention to the soya in foods as it's hidden everywhere! I was vegetarian at the time and for convenience with a screaming baby we were using a lot of soya based meat replacement products and actually she has a stronger reaction to soya than dairy and directly she even reacts to poultry that has been fed soya! We found that between 2 and 3 days after having a heavy soya meal she was completely inconsolable for 2-3days.

Her reflux was under better control with the highest dose of omperazole, as much gaviscon as I could get in her peaking at 9sachets a day plus lactulose to counter the gaviscon constipation. We had domperidone added at about 7 months when her omperazole couldn't be increased anymore. She's still on this combination at 3 but only have 2 gaviscon sachets just before bed