Can anyone help me figure out what is going on with my 6.5 month old DD?
Since around 4 months she has woken at least twice a night to feed (she is BF). So far so normal and even if I missed the days of her going 6, 7 or 8 hours I had accepted that this was what she needed and was lucky in that she would go straight back to sleep after a feed.
About a week ago she started waking around 4 times a night. At first I thought it was a growth spurt as she was quickly calmed by a feed, took a full feed each waking and settled back to sleep. She was also sleeping more in the day having 2 hour naps which whilst not unheard of is unusual for her.
It has now been just over a week of this more frequent waking and in addition the past few days she has been awakening with a really screaming cry, often only an hour or an hour and a half after going to bed (at 7 though sometimes 6.30 if no 3rd nap). I had thought maybe it was painful gas as a couple of times she has seemed to settle after a couple of big farts and she sounds really distressed, as if she is in pain, but most of the time only feeding will do to calm and settle her until the next wake up 2 hours later. It is usually only the first wakeup that is accompanied by this cry.
Do you think she is just hungry or does gas sound a likely culprit? It is a horrible heartbreaking cry and she seems so distressed poor little thing. She has always been quite a farty gassy baby but it has never bothered her to this extent before or if it did a gentle wave motion on her tummy with my hand helped her work it out. I am worried that if it is gas I could actually be making things worse with feeding her.
The other thing I thought could be causing the trouble is having introduced solids. We did so a few weeks ago and she mainly has fruit and veg purees, some finger food (again fruit and veg) and occasionally baby porridge. She was a little sluggish digestion wise in the beginning and cried doing poos and recently had a slight bit of constipation although this was seemingly resolved by offering water regularly and giving her prunes and pears as well as bicycling her legs. I had gradually increased solids to three times a day (whilst being careful not to reduce her milk intake) and was led by DD as to how much she wanted which varies from half a spoonful to a couple of tablespoonsful. I cut the amount of solids back today in case the trouble is her digestive system struggling to adapt.
Any advice gratefully received! Would be nice if I could figure out what to do about the more frequent waking (even if that is actually doing nothing and riding it out) but I would most like to know if anyone has any suggestions as to what could be causing such heart-rending cries and how to resolve what is causing them.
Apologies for the essay I always write loads in order not to leave out any relevant detail!