How to know if my baby is ill or going through a growth spurt

[Kaysflowers]

I'm a first time mum to my daughter who 10 weeks old yesterday. For the last 24 hours she has been more tired and at times quite lethargic. She can nap and when she wakes up, I can interact with her or change her, but not too long after she'll want to go back to sleep. She'll have a burst of energy and then become quite tired. She's drinking a lot, has wet nappies, her mouth is wet (her lips don't appear dry) and she can cry with tears, so I'm not worried about her being dehydrated.

I took her to the doctors and he checked her over. Her breathing is OK (he couldn't hear anything worrying), her circulation is fine, no rashes, or swelling. He couldn't see anything physically wrong and he got to she tmher drink from her bottle, so he could that she is drinking without any difficulties. I did record some examples of me moving her arms and arms around when she was asleep and her not reacting to any of it. Usually if I move her slightly or make a small noise, she'll wake up/react to it. He wasn't too concerned about what he sure of the videos.

He said it was probably nothing, but if anything gets worse then bring her back.

Atm she'll drink, sleep, wake up and interact with me for a little bit before sleeping again. It seems to be this pattern atm

I spoke with my sister and she said it was probably just a growth spurt.

She has had the odd moment of fussiness and her skin can feel clammy at times (I understand how babies can't regulate their body temperatures at this age) and has been sneezing at different times today. From just being born she has sneezed almost daily and everyone said this was normal. She did have a small boogie, which was white, but otherwise I can't see anything different coming from her nose. Her nose doesn't appear to be blocked. She has coughed at different times.

She seems more hungry and shows signs like biting her hand etc. When she wakes up (this could happen several times day and night) sometimes she'll happily lay there and entertain herself and other times she'll immediately cry. She can be clingy and also fussy and difficult to soothe. There are times she's quite content and will lay down in her crib.

It has been hot lately so I don't know if the heat is playing a role in this, but I do try and keeping our bedroom as cool as possible.

I don't know if I'm just being paranoid. I looked at both growth spurts and colds and both of them sound like what she is doing atm.

Very likely to be the heat.

Honestly I’d put all of that down to just the heat we’ve had. Being hotter than normal makes us more tired than normal, less bothered to do anything, wanting more milk than normal not for hunger but for thirst as such a small baby can’t have water yet.

Heat / being a baby. I would monitor now they are when they are awake, how alert they are, how is their soft spots, dry lips etc

Some days they are sleepier between I think 11 and 15 weeks my daughter spent 4-5h every Tuesday afternoon sleeping only momentarily waking for another brief feed before going back to sleep. It was Nov /Dec so not the heat.

I’d absolutely say it’s this weather. We had similar when it’s was very warm a few weeks back.

Sounds normal. My third baby is currently the same age as yours, doesn’t sound vastly different. Some babies are also sleepier babies in general

Mine would do 2 days of feeding & crying, sleep nearly continuously for nearly 24h then grow about once every 10 days at that age. The heat won't be helping. Make sure she's not over dressed and maybe decamp somewhere cool