Any advice? - motherhood getting me down

[SophNx]

My baby will be 10 weeks on Tuesday. I can honestly say I never thought motherhood would be like this. I expected hard and sleep deprived but this is verging onto impossible.

I love her to bits but I just don’t know what I’m doing wrong. She is always crying. She is happy for hour in the morning and then it just goes from bad to worse for the rest of the day. I can’t go out as she just cries everywhere i go. She can be in a trolly fine and in the space of a minute screaming the whole of Asda down. I find it more stressful going out then being inside the house. She cry’s in the pram until she falls to sleep and now started to cry when in her sling for longer than 5 mins. At home she can play on her playmat for 5 mins and then cries and is just generally fussy. She doesn’t sleep much in the day at all. I try to follow wake windows but it’s so hard she shows no signs of sleepy cues or even hunger cues. I’m just winging it all. I don’t feel like I dont know my baby which is making my confidence worse. She is taking 4 naps a day of around 10 or 20 or 30 mins. Night time she wakes once however will even cry in her sleep while sleeping at least 5 times during the night.

She definitely has some sort of reflux but doesn’t mind being lied down. We also thought she had cmpa due to some spots on her skin and the constant crying but that milk never worked apart from getting rid of the spots, but she was still the same exact same baby. If I’m honest I think we was grasping for some kind of answer to explain why she is so so hard work.

Anyone any help or advice or anything to get me through. I feel like I can’t do this. Thank god for my mum who lives around the corner.

Is she lactose intolerant?

At 10 weeks my dd just wanted to be held or in a sling. All. The. Time.

might be worth checking your baby out for intolerance or reflux

but most importantly it will not be like this forever. It will get better.

Honestly. it will.
i really needed someone to tell me that when my DD was 4-12 weeks

@GreatGateauxsby I’m a FTM and keep thinking she just wants be held that’s why she gets in the states but it just feels constant and so unpredictable. I’m hoping it’s only this and it will get better as you say

thanks x

I had one of those babies. For us it was actually reflux and a milk allergy but we didn't know about the milk allergy until he was 3 and diagnosed with Asthma. We weaned him at four months which helped loads.

Keep her upright as much as physically possible. Mine hated the pram. If you don't already use a dummy, give her a dummy and persevere with it if she spits it out. Keep taking her out and just accept she will cry regardless.

My 'baby' is now 10. He has autism and can sometimes be quite grumpy in temperament. Sometimes I wonder if he was just crying to complain 🤷

What milks have you tried and how long have you given them?

Usually you would try 1-2 different hydrolysed formulas for 4-6 weeks each then an amino acid formula for 4-6 weeks. You might need to give them a bit longer before ruling out cmpa. There are also other ingredients that they can react too. My daughter has a coconut allergy identified whilst breastfeeding and there was only one dairy free formula that didn't contain coconut.

Were you using thickeners with the formulas - they are very thin and make reflux worse. Often treating the reflux as well as the allergy is necessary

The newborn days are really really tough! As much as I love my baby I don't wish to be back to the newborn days!

Baby carrier helped that's the only thing that settled him. I wouldn't even try to do the shopping with him, he hated hated hated the pram! Just do a click and collect order or delivery.

It really will get better.

i remember vividly thinking wtf have I done? Is this a huge mistake?
i think I have ruined my marriage, my life and this child’s life 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

she is not even 2 now and a total delight… she’s the light of my life and brings me joy every day.
She’s also fiercely independent and barely wants a cuddle now 😅😅😅

i really wish i had known it would be like this now and everything would be okay. i would have found newborn phase so much easier to endure. At the time i was so sleep deprived and it felt like “this is my life. Forever” Vs “this is the next 3 months then it gets nicer…”

@Superscientist we have tried aptimil pepti and nutramigen. She didn’t like the nutramigen at all wouldn’t drink it so only tried for a week or so. The apti pepti we did only try for about three weeks however for them whole three weeks she has just constant diarrhoea never a solid poo. Plus she seemed no different at all. We did use a thickener but it didn’t seem make much difference again.

thanks for your help

My babybwas like this, unsettled to the point of being miserable during his wake windows, he had silent reflux and was put on omeprazole. Game changer. He then got diagnosed with CMPI andnthe formula didnhelp in our case. Does she arch her back when she cries?

Both of those formulas contain dairy just partially broken down. For some babies that's far enough from dairy to not show symptoms but more sensitive babies need no dairy at all. You need an amino acid formula. The two most commonly prescribed formulas are neocate and alfamino. They both taste disgusting but we managed to get my 10 month old to switch from ebf to alfamino and she stayed on it until 2.

Sounds like silent reflux. She will need medication but honestly it’s amazing. We also swapped over to kendamil and noticed that alone made a huge difference

@Imisscoffee2021
she always arches her back when crie and as you say just constantly miserable during wake windows. How did you know it was silent reflux? Thanks x

@SophNx
He made swallowing sounds and grimaced after feeds, didn't tolerate his flat bassinet pram and the acid would build up and he'd have what we thought was colic but now we know just bad reflux screaming for hours in the evenings which started to join up to day times.

He also arched his back when crying, the acid really burns their lottle throats. He was a very miserable neborn which after having IVF and a traumatic birth just felt horrendous. Because he didn't posset or vomit (silent reflux so called because they swallow it again) he didn't lose weight so health visitors weren't worried but one day he spent the day either screaming or whimpering in pain and I couldn't deal with it (he was only 4 weeks at this point) and I took him to A&E because it didn't seem right. Spent all day being observed in paediatric and the consultant diagnosed silent reflux and put him on 5mcgs omeprazole. This wsnt enough as he was a big baby so they then upped to 15mcgs a week or two later when I went back as there was no change.

That really helped him, as its a PPI so the regurgitation wasn't causing him pain anymore. He finally stopped having reflux completely when he went onto Aptamil Pepti Syneo as he has an intolerance rather than allergy to cows milk protein. He's a happy and precocious 5 month old now, the meds plus the formula has made him a different baby to that poor little boy with reflux:( he will have to be weaned off omeprazole soon but that's fine, jts given us our baby back and enabled him to have happy wake windows to explore and learn and play.

@Imisscoffee2021

i see! Maybe it’s a worth mentioning to the GP. So happy your litttle boy is now a happy one. Thanks for the info

@ToughLoveLDN do you think? I am going to mention it to the GP. Do you have a baby with silent reflux?

@SophNx my DD is now 3 but she did have silent reflux, which the midwives, health visitor and the GP all missed. She was born with other health issues so was under the care of great ormond street and it was her consultant there that diagnosed her. Honestly after taking the omeprazole she was like a completely different baby.

Go to GP and HV and get all the help you can.

On the other stuff, unless you're right next to someone for a prolonged period, I don't think baby crying matters to other people as much as you think. I can tune it out! Go for walks - to parks if you're worried about bothering people. I think being stuck in the house feeling stressed and trapped often makes the problem much worse. You lose all sense of perspective.

I found baby groups helpful too, seeing other people going through the same issues and older babies so I knew what the next stage was, learned about how to deal with problems while they occurred and before they cropped up.

If nothing else, putting music on and having a good sing and dance around can help. With little babies who cry a lot, your body can just build up lots of stress without you realising.

@NoCloudsAllowed
Thanks for the advice! Needed to hear that I feel like the cry is so much worse to the mother