Please tell me we’re not the only ones

[Newmum931002]

Hi ladies

I posted on here when my baby girl was only 2 weeks old and you were all so helpful and kind so I’m hoping for some insight again, me and my husband are desperate for some answers and hope that this will get better because at the moment it feels nearly impossible.

Last night was particularly bad - the crying, the screaming.. the purple crying is off the charts at times. It’s every evening without fail. I’ve always referred to her as a ‘moody little mare’ (filled with love I promise) because at the start it always felt like if she wasn’t feeding or sleeping she was crying -day or night. This has improved over the duration of her short little life so far - she’s 8 weeks now.

During the day she’s definitely more contented at times. I can get her on the playmat now without her sounding like I’m cutting her leg off.. tummy time is something she enjoys.. we can go for walks with her in the carrier -she seems fairly happy in it, nods off normally! Still not a fan of the buggy but oh well - it makes a good trolly!
After 5pm however.. completely different set of rules it seems. Nothing will comfort her and once she goes.. SHE GOES!

Doctor told me she has colic.. I’m not convinced. During the day feeding is absolutely fine. She’s EBF and never ever makes a fuss over feeds.. even when she was smaller and more fractious her kick offs weren’t any worse after feeding.. if anything she’d nod off for a couple of hours after looking all angelic.
At night/evening - as far as I’m concerned - feeding is also fine but she can be very very fussy. Grabbing me.. her own face.. scratching.. pulling off and crying like I’ve taken it away.. and this will go on for hours and it just feels like as the hours tick by it’s gradually getting worse before she’s so spent she just KO’s - normally by about 9 she’s not asleep but she’s given up the fight and chilled out some what.. but not 100%. 10pm is the earliest we manage to calm her and get her to bed - she will normally do a 4ish hour stretch (recently we’ve had some 5hrs which have been lovely) before she wakes for nappy change and feed and she is absolutely fine after that and just goes back off to sleep.

Did anyone else go through this and when did it end!? I just want her to be happy and it’s so hard to see her like this every single day.

Ugh this sucks for you. But if she's happy the rest of the time, it actually seems normal.

You're breastfeeding - in the early evening your boobs produce less milk, so babies don't get as full as quickly. Those feeds get shorter and fussier and they take in more air. The fact that she's happy the rest of the time suggests that it is not going to be a dairy allergy which is often suggested if babies are unhappy.

Have you tried baths, and/or bathing with her? Wrapping up warm, popping her in a sling and going for a walk? Tiger in the Tree hold? Tummy massage?

Having said all this - she is 8 weeks. I know to you it feels like she's been here for an eternity but really she is still properly in the 4th trimester. This will pass xx

What you've described is a textbook case of colic. Why do you doubt the Doctor's diagnosis?

You're not alone. Colic is common. The 'witching hour' it's often called.

Are you getting really good burps from her when she feeds? Keeping her upright after food? Doing warm baths? Bicycle legs? This will all help if it's colic and won't do any harm if it isn't.

They do grow out of it around 3/4 months. I know that seems ages away at the moment, but you'll get there! Make sure you're both getting breaks away.

Hi. Yes this does sound like textbook colic. My 3rd dc had it and I can really empathise because it is torturous!

It does pass though in a matter of weeks. In the meantime - look after yourself, try to tag team it as much as you can to have a break from the crying (preferably in a room where you can't hear it if possible).

My DS was exclusively BF and suffered terrible colic for 2 hours per day for 3 weeks. My health visitor walked in one day to find me very tearful and at my wits end! She calmly took baby, told me to make us both tea and settled him in 2 minutes. I asked her to come every day!!! 🤣
She told me it would end, but, until then, when he started crying, and I thought it was colic, to take him out for a walk. It took another week and the walk wasn’t for him, I realised it was for me; to stop my anxiety!

Sounds like colic to me. You could almost set your watch by it.

It definitely sounds like colic to me. If you don’t think it’s colic, what do you think it might be?

Is she definitely getting enough milk in the evening? I used to have to pump in the morning to ensure I had enough all day and would sometimes top up with the morning’s milk. I kept it up until about 4 months.

Sounds like colic to me too- my firstborn was the same and it was hell on earth for my mental health.

I’m often confused when the word colic is used because people seem to use it with two distinct meanings. My understanding of it is as per the NHS: ‘Colic is when a baby cries a lot but there's no obvious cause. It's a common problem that should get better by around 3 or 4 months of age.’

However, I’m aware that lots of people (including some midwives and health visitors) use it to specifically refer to digestive upset. A baby who cries all the time may well have digestive upset (they may have even caused it through their screaming and writhing and the likelihood that they can’t feed well when they are so stressed).

I never did work out whether my DD had the digestive issues definition of colic, but she definitely had colic in the broader sense- incessant crying with no obvious cause, fractious, difficult to settle etc. I think it might just be that some babies are more easily overstimulated than others (it turned out my DD had ADHD but we didn’t know that till she was 18).

But they do grow out of the witching hour and life gets easier when everyone is able to sleep a bit more.

Hang in there, tag-team as much as possible, bite the hand off anyone who is willing to pop round and sit with your baby for an hour or two in the daytime so you can rest (do NOT do housework). We also found white noise helpful for our DD, but mostly it was a case of just riding it out and trying to remain sane 😬

It really does sound like purple crying or colic.
im sorry it’s so awful!
do you have help?

I was in your exact situation with my dd. I knew it wasn't colic as not only was she Bf-ed but she had no issues ever during the day. I'm sure you've come across the terms cactus / witching hours online where your baby just becomes inconsolable for a few hours every evening. My baby was 6 weeks by christmas and the arrival of the tree and its lights fixed things to such a degree that I bought a big indoor plant after christmas and draped it in fairy lights just to keep the screaming at bay.

Witching hour is meant to be worst around 6-8 weeks. Hang in there, it does get better eventually!

So colic isn't a diagnosis to do with feeding or digestion, it's that witching hour crying where your baby is inconsolable and crying in the evening/night.

My son (now 3) was colicky and it was soul destroying. Sometimes 5h of non-stop screaming. He was breast fed as well.

We never did get to the bottom of what caused it, but a number of things helped:

• prioritizing daytime sleep even though it meant contact naps. Otherwise he got very overtired and overwhelmed, which contributed to screaming
• Getting a dummy. He liked to suck to soothe, but would sometimes get stuck in a loop of breastfeeding, getting uncomfortably full and then feeding more to soothe the discomfort, so then getting more distressed. Having a dummy calmed him enough to feed if he was hungry, and soothed him without overfeeding if he wasn't

It is really hard. If you haven't experienced it you can't imagine. But it will get better!

Oh see I just assumed colic meant digestive issues and pain! Not just ridiculous amount of screaming and crying.
she’s fine in the bath and on the changing mat weirdly enough… that stops the crying. And being walked round the house but it’s not doing my back any bloody good that’s for sure.

Definitely! She’s a chunky gal! And I pump!

I was told by my family I suffered with colic galore and would scream the household down until 9 months old 😬 But that was the 80s….

I just assumed colic meant pain.. that’s how it was explained to me. Being soothed by being placed on a changing mat leads me to believe she’s not in pain.. that’s one of the things she likes.. it’s so weird

I thought it just meant pain.. I don’t believe she’s in pain. During the day she’s absolutely fine. Burps are fine.. when she passes wind there’s no fussing, she just does it!

god I hope she does grow out of it because this is like torture

It’s really, really hard. We tried so many things and lots of them helped- but nothing helped every time or permanently so the ‘things that helped’ kept changing every few days!

But as a general rule- white noise, dummies and movement (rocking, pushing in pram etc) helped.

It’s a real test for a relationship because no one should have to manage it on their own- support is so important. My DH was brilliant- he couldn’t do night feeds because I was bfing, but he would take DD off me when we’d finished a feed. I’d make him a cuppa when he was soothing baby, and he made plenty for me when it was my turn. Sometimes he’d take her for a spin in the car in the middle of the night when she was too overwhelmed and stressed to fall asleep. We’d take turns on weekends so one could have a lie-in or an afternoon nap. Things like that so we each felt supported- it was still immensely stressful and exhausting, but that little bit easier with support.

I was also lucky to have my Mum not too far away as a very devoted Grandma so sometimes I’d phone her first thing in the morning in tears because I’d barely slept. She’d tell me to head over to hers where she would take DD and let me zonk out on the sofa for a couple of hours. She was more than happy to take DD off in the pram round the village to show off to her neighbours and friends 😂 So if you have lovely parents or ILs nearby, see if they can help de-stress you a little. 💐

It is a very vague definition! It's more likely discomfort than pain. It's unlikely they're crying for absolutely no reason whatsoever (unless it's a survival feature throwback maybe?). It's more that we can't really pin down what the discomfort is and so it's essentially 'crying with no cause'. Things like burping, bicycle legs, holding them upright, rocking, warm baths, white noise etc. are often helpful because it can soothe whatever discomfort they're in (which may be wind based, but not necessarily).

If putting her on the changing mat soothes her, then put her there! There's no harm in that.

You’re not wrong, OP - colic is a medical term meaning crampy pain - adults can also have ‘biliary colic’ from gallstones or ‘renal colic’ from kidney stones. I’m a GP and it’s not a term I ever use in regard to a crying baby, because it’s inaccurate and a bit misleading.

Thank you for this, I’m so stumped as to what’s going on with her.

Mine are 17 and 13 now but my eldest had colic and it was horrific! The legs ‘bicycle’ because of the pain. Get something from the chemist and introduce that. I think we used gripe water and another thing that I can’t recall but it helped a little, by 13 weeks she was sleeping 12 hours straight, it was like someone turned a switch in her tummy!
good luck, it does
go- maybe if you can go to bed early and let your partner feed her a bottle (if you pump), I used to go to bed at 7-8pm as I knew by 2 am I’d be up and in the lounge with her

It might be that there isn’t anything wrong- or at least not something you can do anything about. She might have a physical pain or problem that’s causing the stress, or she might just be a fractious baby. I think that’s what the term colic means when it’s used for babies. Maybe some babies are just easily overstimulated, maybe they don’t like feeding, or the world is too exciting and it stops them getting to sleep, or maybe they’re very sensitive to noise, lights etc. Or maybe they just hate being a baby and can’t wait to get up and about and verbal!

Its textbook colic and its called witching hour.

Have you tried gripe water? One thing that used to appease mine was nappy free time for some reason.

Totally normal OP.