The 3:30am wake up

[Elbie2019]

Hi all,
My daughter is 2 weeks & 2 days old. She is still sleeping most of the day although she does have periods where she’s awake maybe for 30/45 minutes at a time after her feeds. She is formula fed and feed around 8pm, 11pm and then I’ve been giving her a dream feed around 1:30am which works well. We’re lucky and she sleeps until around 3:30/4. However, when she wakes, she has another feed and then that’s it! She’s awake until 7am. It’s as though she’s in pain - squirming, jerking, letting out cries, arching her back, banging her head off my chest when I try to hold her etc.

She has begun to have episodes of sickliness through the day, arches her back and turns her head right around after a feed (despite getting her wind up ok now), cries etc. But no way for as long or as badly as during the night.

I feel like I don’t know how to help her :( I don’t expect her to go any more than 3 hours at the moment so it’s not the waking up - it’s the experience we have during the night. Any advice or similar experiences?

Could she have trapped wind which is causing her discomfort? My twins struggled with this from about 4 weeks. We found infacol and gripe water helped bring up her gas and helped with this.

We have tried infacol but it doesn’t seem to do anything for her @twinmum89. I need to wait until she is 4 weeks to try gripe water but hopefully it will help her. I switched her bottles and she is much better at getting some wind up now but that’s not to say there isn’t more trapped in there. It’s awful to watch x

Have you tried watching some YouTube videos or asking your health visitor team for advice on how to gently massage trapped wind? I found this really helpful x

It definitely sounds like wind.

We had to try all sorts of massage to get our baby's wind untrapped. I found it worked best holding her vertically against my chest with her head over my shoulder, my husband lay her with her tummy on his thigh and supported her head over his knee to massage her back.

We uad simillar with dd (same age( and colief has really helped her be more productive with her wind - incould wind her easily during the day but she wouldn't part with it during the night. Colief helps them break down the lactose in milk easier

By the way my partner and I used infacol and gripe water religiously for our son’s colic until we were informed that there’s actually no clinical evidence they do anything. I refused to believe it for a few weeks longer than he did and continued to use them both but eventually googled it and then stopped using them and realised there was no difference in his colic! Basically the benefits I thought they were having (and which everyone else does too) are based on feeling like you’re helping the situation. Good luck, I really feel for you xx

Hi,

My little one is 7 weeks old and we have experienced the same problems. Things that have worked for us:

• Sit your baby up to feed.
• Take regular breaks from feeding to burp him/her (my baby takes in a lot of air)
• Try to keep your baby calm when feeding (easier said than done sometimes!) and for up to 30 minutes after feeding.
• I keep my baby upright for a short while after feeding. She starts to cry if I lie her down straight away.
• Adjust the temperature of the milk (I keep mine fairly warm, ie. I cannot feel it when I drip it on to my wrist, rather than cold room temperature).
• Have you experimented with different bottle designs? I've recently switched to the Tommee Tippee Close to Nature bottles for our evening feeds. They are specially designed for colicky babies.

Hope some of these tips help. xx

We have also found the "football hold" to be quite effective to remove wind and some friends use "bicycle legs".

www.happiestbaby.com/blogs/baby/how-to-hold-a-baby

I found the trapped wind much easier to manage once my baby learnt how to burp properly.

Does she have a good strong suck? Reason I ask is I changed the teats on LO bottles to medium flow from slow flow and she seemed to take in less air and get less wind that way. She's been much happier since I changed them about 4 weeks ago (she's 10 weeks now). She might be a bit little at 2 weeks but might be worth a try with a bottle and see how she gets on.

@Elbie2019 - how is your daughter doing? Did any of the tips help?

Sorry for the late reply @snowy0wl . After speaking to the health visitor, we decided to change her milk to the comfort milk. She is still very windy but gets it up a bit better now. We also changed her bottles to the advanced tommee tipped anti colic and this seems to also help.
Thanks for all of your advice!