Baby discomfort overnight

[Lionbaby]

I have an 11 week old baby and we are struggling with the overnights. He is breastfed and initially settles well after a feed, but after 20 mins or so he starts to become uncomfortable in his sleep - arching his back, pulling up his legs, making groans/moans noises etc.

He usually fusses like this for about 30 seconds or so and then settles back into comfortable seeming sleep for a minute before he scrunches up again, and if left on his own this goes on either until he wakes for a feed or wakes himself up and cries.

It just affects him at night and seems to be getting worse rather than better as he gets towards 3 months.

I am trying to help him as much as possible:

• Burping mid-feed and at the end of the feed
• Infacol
• Holding him when feeding so that his tummy is lower than his mouth
• Keeping upright for 20 mins after every feed
• Tummy time in the day
• Getting him out of his crib when he is uncomfortable for tummy massage and bicycling legs to help with gas

I haven’t cut anything from my diet as the issue only seems to be at night. The pharmacist suggested propping up the cot but I’m worried about safe sleep guidance.

I had a doctors appointment yesterday and have a prescription for gaviscon infant, which we’ve not tried yet as we’ve just started using colief and the pharmacist recommended using either one or the other. The colief either isn’t helping or hasn’t had an effect yet.

It’s awful seeing him in pain and not knowing what the issue is or how to help.

Has anyone been through similar and found any answers or solution?
Thank you

I think you have all the answers and solutions - unfortunately it just takes time.

It won't last forever and won't do any lasting damage,trapped wind hurts whatever the age.

Is he crying? If not, this is possibly just newborns being newborns.

Our DD used to make little goat noises, scrunch and squirm and generally keep us wide awake between about 2am and 5am every night doing the same thing. She grew our of it somewhere around 3/4 months.

Thanks very much for the responses, it is much appreciated and really reassuring. He generally doesn’t wake up thankfully. We’ll just have to hope it starts getting better soon. X

Is he definitely in pain? Babies of this age practice facial expressions and movements - many grunt and squirm in their sleep. Is he waking up when he does this?

I had this exact same situation. Assuming nothing odd about baby’s nappy/output that would suggest an allergy or anything?
I went to an osteopath, pharmacy, breastfeeding support, did all you did with infacol, colief. Saw one Gp who prescribed gaviscon. Went back to see another GP and I said should I cut stuff from my diet (osteopath suggested dairy)? GP was very blunt and said-
Dont be silly. Waste of time and affects your nutrition. Newborns are pretty shit, their systems aren’t quite mature enough to handle digestion how we’d expect. Western culture has created this idea babies have to eat and sleep at certain times and perfectly. A woman in the mountains of Asia or another 3rd world
country wouldn’t bother their Dr for this. Babies only come out at 40weeks because human brains are the most developed/biggest of mammals and if they spend any longer in our womb we couldn’t push them out. Ideally they need 52 weeks in there (hence the 4th trimester).
She told me to wear some ear plugs to block out enough of the moving about so I could sleep but so I could still hear him cry, he was in crib next to me, and when he woke crying for feed etc, go to him. But if he’s sleeping but moaning and groaning and moving, leave him be. She said it would just stop as he got bigger and more developed.
I went away thinking she was so unhelpful, no empathy, just wanted me gone/palmed me off. But she was so right. I didn’t change my diet, or anything else, and as he got bigger he got better at feeding, better at digesting.
She was blunt, unkind and almost annoyed I took an appointment- but she was right. And I always think back on that and how crappy it felt at the time; but how she really called it and it did just get better.

Thank you for your helpful replies! @TinyTeachr He mostly sleeps through it actually so you may be right about him seeming in pain but that not being the case - hopefully so.

And thank you @Shleepymummy for sharing. No signs of any allergies. I felt the same leaving the doctors, like I hadn’t explained it well enough and that’s why they weren’t overly concerned. Really glad to hear the problem resolved for you - it’s made me feel much better to hear that!

It does sound like wind infacol made my 12 week old much worse but then I think we over did it we gave it with every bottle and the poor child was so much worse with wind so we stopped it , I had to stop giving colief this morning as she has had a lot of dirty nappies and is in pain has barley slept . All that's left is gripe water. My partner sits with his knees up and sits her in them in a squat position to try get the wind out as well
It does help

Hi, just wanted to come back to this with a quick update for any future post viewers. We kept going with all the things mentioned above but at 3.5/4 months it quickly just stopped being an issue, as posters said it might! Thanks again for all the comments and advice.