Windy 4 week old can't settle lying down...help please?

[Mitsouko]

Hi ladies, I could really do with little advice. My 4 week old DD has been having what looks like terrible wind pain / colic the past two weeks. She settles well after being winded and lying upright on me or DH's chest - bit when placed on her back in moses basket she squirms uncomfortably, scrunches face, grunts, draws legs to chest, eventually shrieks and starts crying - at which point I pick her up and try to wind again and hold her upright for a bit. Then place her back down, and repeat endlessly...

We are BF every 2-3 hours but she's not really getting much rest in between feeds and shows signs of being really overtired. I am too - probably only managing a few hours a day in 30 minute stretches.

Giving her Infacol but not sure how effective it is. Tried cutting out dairy for a week with no effect. Drinking fennel tea. Doing colic massage.

My DM has been helping but goes home next week. She lives abroad - neither DH nor I have any other family around to assist. Friends scattered around London with busy lives, jobs, kids of their own. DH working long hours with equally long commute so will have to cope on my own soon?

DD is my first baby so could really use some tips from experienced mums!

You could try raising one end of the moses basket so that she is not lying flat, have you had her checked out for reflux, she sounds very much like DS was when he was a baby.

Is she swaddled? This can help with wind. You might want to google silent reflux and see if the symptoms match.

I had exactly the same thing with my DD. I found gripe water helps. Lots of shops don't have it in stock any more but Boots do an apple flavoured own brand one. It's easier to get it into her without a fuss if I squirt it into the corner of her mouth while she's feeding. My SIL swears by colief but I've never tried it. The other thing that helped was to sit her up bolt upright on my lap after feeds, as that got more wind up than putting her upright against my shoulder. Other people told me they had luck using cranial osteopathy but it didn't work for us.

Oh and I also found she is much worse when I eat tomato - it's still the case almost 7 months in!

Thanks! Will definitely try raising her moses basket a bit and see if that helps. Have googled reflux symptoms and not sure - my mum thinks it's more similar to classic colic - but if she doesn't improve we'll be back to the GP for a check up. Picking up some Colief from the chemist today, which I hope will help her a bit. Don't think I've had tomatoes recently, but will keep that in mind! Guess if there was a magic cure all for this we would know by now. Thanks again.

Oh, and have tried swaddling too...she hates it! Just gets more worked up and tries to kick and wiggle out. Sigh....

With my DD who had similar problems what I did was as well as raising the head end of her moses basket I also placed a rolled up small towel under her legs so that her legs were raised. I found it took the pressure off her tummy and she settled much better.

My DD also had silent reflux so I couldn't raise her legs too high up but after a while I found a height that helped without causing reflux pain too.

When you lay her in the Moses basket lift her legs up and gently hold them there- but don't raise them higher than her heart- so not as ugh as if you were changing her nappy. If she settles without the squirming etc then a small rolled up towel could be used permanently for a few weeks till her digestion matures.

Thanks...shall definitely give that a try. She draws her legs up to her chest and kicks and squirms whenever laid down so maybe a little support underneath could help.

She's sleeping peacefully on my chest now and I'm going to try putting her in a Moby wrap later, but I'm going to have to sleep myself at some point...

Don't know if this will help but in ds we discovered it was the infacol making it worse.

Without it his wind just came up by itself in dribs and drabs throughout the day with no need for "winding". Infacol and the like work by making the wind all sort of join-together so as to come up in one big burp, ds could never get this up and it caused him loads of pain.

Every child is different but for ds just raising the head of his Moses basket and stopping all infacol/gripe water type stuff worked like magic.