10 week old screams while held at bedtime

[fanjobiscuits]

How do I get him to stop? He normally likes being held but when we take him up to bed and sit with him in a darkened room he howls for up to an hour or more before finally going to sleep. Am beginning to dread bedtime. What can we do?

Ds did this around 11 weeks. It was awful. But I think it lasted 2 weeks max. In the mean time we just rocked, sssshed, held, whatever it took to calm him.

It will pass.

Do you feed him?

DC3 also did this. (I'm assuming you've ruled out colic)
I literally had to hold him in my arms or the baby carrier and pace the room for an hour and then he'd drop off to sleep.
It was really tough going and at some points I felt like I'd failed him in some way but I read an article that said some babies like to make a racket before they sleep and rationalised it to myself that even if I couldn't soothe him I still wanted him to know I was there for him.

It lasted a couple of weeks and then one day I thought to myself 'hang on, he hasn't done that crying thing for ages' :)

have you tried just putting him in his cot/basket and sitting with him or stroking his hand instead of holding him?I say this because my DD from about 8 weeks used to scream blue murder if we held her/rocked her/shushed her and getting her to sleep would take hours. In frustration one evening I just put her in her cot so I could calm down a bit, and after 10 minutes of mild whinging she fell asleep. We soon realised that she found being touched/held frustrating and it stopped her from going to sleep. If we got her relaxed then just put her down awake she would fall asleep with much less stress and noise!

Thanks all. We do feed him, have tried various timings for this to rule out wind.

Interesting idea re: putting him in cot - will try this though normally he won't fall asleep unless held (does this without screaming during day for naps).

Has been at least 2 weeks and seems to be getting worse.

Around this age my DD started doing this at naps. Up to that point she'd needed to either be in sling or vigorously rocked to sleep for naps (fed to sleep at night). I realised that perhaps she didn't want to be held for naps anymore and started putting her down in cot or napping her in pram instead with good success. She'll still sometimes need a gentle rock for cot naps, but nothing like before and the nap time screaming fits have ceased.

Ps I segued to cot naps by starting a v short pre nap routine - up to bedroom, zip in sleeping bag, close blind, turn on white noise, quick song and cuddle, put in cot. Although, to be fair there has up until very recently been a lot of pick-up-put-down after that/ bit of rocking to get to sleep. Sometimes she'd fall asleep in arms and I put her in cot, but increasingly she's falling asleep on her own after I put her down awake. She'll then nap for 30-45 mins. This is huge progress from a few months ago. She's 5 mo