Desperate mummy - 2 week old who hates bedtime!!

[FailedActress]

Hi all, I would be so grateful for any advice anyone can give me on this so please comment with any ideas at all please, they will all be welcome! DD2 is 2 and a half weeks old and compared to DD1, she's a really calm baby for the majority of the time. But bedtime has been an absolute nightmare since I switched from breastfeeding to bottle feeding a few days ago. Since switching, bedtime has turned into a an hour and a half ordeal of crying and screaming and working herself into a frenzy and wanting to drink her bottle but pulling away from it every few gulps. As I say pretty much all of her other feeds are pretty calm and she has no problems falling asleep at any other time of the day or even during her night feeds. So I have no idea why this particular time is so hideous.

The problem is that my OH works till 7ish every night so our bedtime routine for both DDs starts fairly late anyway otherwise he'd never see them so by the time we've got DD2 settled and actually sat down for dinner together, it's time for bed and I just feel like we have no evening together. We really struggled with DD1 cos she was such a high maintenance baby and I felt at the time, it put a real strain on our marriage because we were constantly snapping at each other and I just don't want it to be the same this time.

Does anyone have any ideas for why this could be happening or what we could do about it? Before I lose my sanity!!!

I don't think two week olds have a bedtime as such, evening was always dd's most awake time - from whenever my dinner was ready about 7-11pm she was awake and grumpy and feeding on and off the whole time.

sounds like a bit of evening colic?
she's ok with the milk brand the rest of the time?
infacol is good.

agree 2 weeks v v early for bedtime! I kept ds3 downstairs with me til my own bedtime at that age, so I could relax / feed/wind as needed, but it's obviously your call

he's 5 mths now, and goes down about 845pm. any earlier and he's up and down and messes about. my other dc in bed asleep for 730... Im sure we'll get there with ds3 at some point!!

Yes I'd second colic. We had it with dd1 every evening at precisely eight o'clock. It is bizarrely accurate. She'd scream for about an hour. It was hideous. Infacol seemed to help, and gripe water. Two weeks is too early for a baby to have any sense of routine I'd have thought.

Does she seem to draw her legs up and clench her tummy? Any physical signs that there might be something wrong? Is it at a similar time every evening?

You have my sympathy. It's horrible and it can last for weeks.

Thanks ladies, we started 'bedtime' this early with DD1 as well as it saved our sanity and it seemed to work really well with her. She was one of those babies that never slept and just cried constantly day and night immediately from birth but we found that she actually thrived on the bedtime routine once she started knowing what to expect so we just ran with it for DD2.

And to be fair DD2 was also fine with bedtime when I was breastfeeding her but it's just since giving her the bottle before bed that she's been so unsettled. I did buy some infacol yesterday and we have been trying that but it didn't seem to have much effect today.

It could be that she doesn't like the bottle, if that's the only one she has. Try breastfeeding her and see if she's any different.

DS used to do that with both breast and bottle - sucking, then pulling off, crying. Eventually it dawned on me that he wanted the comfort of sucking, but not the milk. So, we went with a dummy, against my wishes, but DS likes it.

However, I think dummies are not recommended for babies under six weeks. My baby brother used to suck on my mum's little finger when going to sleep. Might be worth a go?