5 week old fussy

[Anne8888]

I am really struggling mentally atm with my 5 week old. He is exclusively BF and seems to be going shorter in between feeds for the past week. If he’s not feeding then he’s crying, he just spends all of his awake time crying, miserable and it’s so draining. He seems to settle a bit more for his dad but whenever I’m even holding him he just cries (probably because he can smell me) even though he’s pretty much just fed.
This is my second baby however my first had CMPA and reflux and was FF so was extremely unsettled from the beginning so I feel like I don’t have much to compare the new baby’s behaviour to and I don’t know if what I’m experiencing is normal. It’s so so hard.
Baby also likes to fight his sleep so my arms feel like they are about to fall off from the constant walking up and down and rocking, only for him to wake straight away after I put him down.
Please tell me if this is normal? Am I just in the thick of it and will it start to get better soon? I was considering introducing some formula but I have bad PTSD in case he is CMPA too.

I’ve got 2 CMPA kids - one has an incredibly rare and severe form of it.
I remember the feelings you describe very well ❤️

If baby is ebf, then there’s no harm at all in you adjusting your diet, and just see if it makes a difference? 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️
Start with the obvious stuff - milk, cheese, yoghurt etc
If still no improvement after a few days, go more strict and remove anything with milk listed on the ingredients. With my 3rd baby, I noticed a difference within a few days! I stayed dairy-free for the entire 3 years she was breastfeeding.

If it’s not that, it could just be that baby is approaching the famous 6 week growth spurt. Back to cluster feeding, sleeping in tiny spurts and just generally quite fussy.

Are you receiving any support from your HV or GP?

@WhatIsTheCharge did you notice the symptoms straight away? I had the most content baby ever for the first 3.5 weeks and now it’s all changed 😢xx

@MrsSkylerWhite the HV is coming on Friday. GP is useless, went to him with my concerns about baby and he was more interested in me filling out the Edinburgh postnatal depression score form!

With my second (the one with the rare form), yeah - within a day of his birth it was obvious something was wrong.
With my third, no. It took a little while for symptoms to properly set in. The only symptom she had from early on was the rash, but everyone was telling me that was just normal “baby acne” and would clear. She didn’t have other symptoms at that point so I assumed they were right….but then the vomiting, awful mucous nappies etc all started. Within a few days of me removing dairy from my diet, symptoms started to ease, and within about 2 weeks were gone entirely.

My son was EBF and had CMPA. Paedetrician said it's very very rare for them to react to the small amounts of dairy in breastmilk and discouraged me from removing dairy from my diet.

I didn't listen as my baby was so fussy, it was killing me. I removed all dairy and within a week he was a different baby.

He's a toddler and still very allergic to dairy, soy and eggs.

@BoyMummummum how many weeks was he when you noticed?

I think about 5 or 6 weeks actually. I remember quitting dairy at 7 weeks.

Not saying it’s this, but are you producing enough milk? I fed my DS every 90 mins maximum for 6 months straight. Now I look back and I know I wasn’t producing enough milk. I went though 6 months of hell because I couldn’t bring myself to give him formula because of the guilt. I wasted those 6 months being miserable.