Excessive crying before sleep

[louisoscar]

My dd is 6 weeks old and breastfed. My problem is that she just cries and cries before every nap and bedtime for up to an hour each time. This means it feels like she is crying all day. We have tried all ways to soothe her: gentle rocking, walking with her in a sling ( she usually sleeps eventually like this) taking her in the buggy or car but she screams for all of them. We have tried a dummy which just makes her cry more. I know she is tired as she yawns in between cries (or maybe the crying is tiring her out) but it is exhausting us all that she is like this. I am beginning to wonder if she doesn't have some form of reflux which is distressing her like this although she sleeps very well at night in her Moses basket; past two nights a 5 hour stretch followed by two 2 hour sleeps with feeds in between. However I am feeding her to sleep and it can take hours to get her to sleep that way but at least she's not crying.

Any ideas??

My DD did this at 5 weeks and we found she had colic. So I think off to your GP.

My dd cried an awful lot and I found out she had silent reflux. I was sort of soldiering on thinking that all babies cry a lot so was v relieved when a family member said that lots of unexplained crying isn't actually normal and should be checked out. Hope things improve!

Could be reflux but could also just be chronic over tiredness.

if you do have a way of getting her to sleep (you say the sling works eventually?) try using this to get her LOTS of sleep for a few days - more than she ought to need - as she has a sleep deficit to catch up. then see if that makes her easier to settle on subsequent days?

As the others said, it could be reflux and/or colic) our DS did the same and had both. We also took him to chiropractic - HV noticed he only turned his head one way. Turned out he had a neck problem. Several sessions later it was fixed and crying greatly reduced! He's 6mths now and settles himself. He still wakes at night but that's another story! Hope that helps. Also, have u troed white noise? The mumsnet app has a good white noise app and u can buy machines on amazon - this also worked for us!

Thanks for all the advice. We have pretty much ruled out reflux after speaking to gp friend so now just concentrating on how to get her to take those darned naps! I agree that it is probably chronic ot causing the crying and I feel such a failure that I can't get her to nap despite all my best efforts. Yesterday was awful as we had the in laws here and she would not settle at all for more than 40 mins at a time. Consequently I got her to bed for 8.30 (earliest yet for her) and she slept until 8am starting with a 5.5 hour stretch. Today has been much better as dh somehow managed to get her to sleep in the pram for 2.5 hours. The rest of the day has been much easier since then.

Onwards and upwards!

40 minute sleeps are quite normal for babies. Are you leaving too long between sleeps maybe? If she wakes at 8am I would start feeding her to sleep in a darkened room by 9.30am - maybe lie down in bed with her.