6 month old writhing in pain at night?

[starship92]

basically since he was born my DS has been extremely unsettled from around 4am onwards, which i put down to wind (arching back, pulling up knees etc)

When he went for his first set of vaccines he was just over 3 months old and i mentioned this to the doctor - she gave me some infant gaviscon to try but after reading terrible things about the constipation it causes i never actually used it, plus i didnt feel like he had silent reflux as he was fine during the day and very settled for the first half of the night.

Now that hes 6 months things really havent improved, he stretches and cries out as though in pain and could do this upwards of 6 times a night.

Hes breastfed and i have stopped feeding him to sleep for over 2 weeks now to rule out that hes waking needing boob to get back to sleep!

Im now at a loss of what to do - i am beyond exhausted getting up so many times through the night so any help would be greatly appreciated.

My HV was out today for the month review but basically just said that i should appreciate that hes a good daytime napper lol

thank you :)

Could you try putting him down to bed abit later (possibly giving him a later last nap?) My children have always been harder the second half of the night when they aren't tired enough to re-settle well.

Could you reintroduce the breastfeeding during the night?
It's always worked well for settling them back faster IME and he is still very little

Hi OP, sorry that you didn’t get much advice from the health visitor. I have found that health visitors are often lovely people but don’t have all the answers! I guess because all babies are different.
My little girl was prescribed Gaviscon at around seven months, after some truly horrendous nights with upwards of ten wakes. I do believe she had some kind of silent reflux but we could never get the Gaviscon into her (she refused bottles and wouldn’t take it from a cup or syringe, unsurprisingly given the horrid taste!)
I decided to cut out dairy from my diet completely for six weeks. Around the same time I saw a cranial osteopath and a lactation consultant, who observed me feed and saw that my baby had a tongue tie. She believed that she was swallowing air whilst feeding due to her shallow latch and that this was contributing to the silent reflux and pain she experienced at night. It’s great that you have been able to reduce feeding to sleep as we relied heavily on this, but in hindsight I wonder if this was exacerbating the problem.
So, if you are able to have your baby assessed for tongue tie, this might give you some answers, although at this late stage we were advised to leave well enough alone rather than have the tie cut. I also wonder whether it was the cranial osteopath that did the trick for my baby, as I’d had a very long latent labour followed by a very quick active labour.
I reintroduced cows milk into my own diet and my baby now also has cows milk with her food, so I ruled out an intolerance there. It really is so hard trying to work out what the problem could be but a process of elimination might help. Honestly, I think my baby just needed time to settle in to eating solid food, time to learn how to sleep and time to figure out the world. Everything has improved with time although she still wakes three times on an average night. We have coped by bed sharing, although I know this isn’t an option for lots of people. Good luck and a big well done for getting this far. The sleep deprivation is torturous.