Baby sleeping but restless all night

[Blu3Bell]

Really struggling and any advice welcome! Baby is 9 weeks and for the last week or so has been restless all night. He's asleep, but CONSTANTLY grunting, pulling his legs up and flailing his arms or rubbing them across his face. He whimpers and seems really distressed and is grouchy through the day because he's not sleeping soundly.

I've tried talking to my partner and my mum but they just say noise and movement in sleep is normal and it's probably gas which I know but surely all night is not normal? It's continuous for hours at a time, I know because I'm awake watching him because I can't sleep through the noise!

Im worried something worse than gas is going on and I'm also worried how much longer I can cope without sleeping when he's keeping me up all night. Please help!

Congratulations first on your new baby - they're amazing, yet a real worry too!
I've had two and yes I've also seen the same with certainly my first child. She had colic and was very windy, so gripe water did help a little, as did literally winding her all the time to help move gas. By 13 weeks she was over that stage and sleeping really well, until teething stage, but that too wasn't too bad
Good luck and always chat to your HV too if you're worried

@FloofPaws Thank you, it's reassuring to know I'm not the only one! I'll give gripe water a go. I did try and get hold of my hv but ended up speaking to a different one who didn't seem to understand what I was asking.

Our DS was like this as a newborn and the lack of sleep was awful! We tried colief and that worked really well for us - he was EBF but we just gave 30ml of formula with the colief in at every feed. Yes the bottles for that little formula were a faff but it was worth it for the better sleep. (We also pre made the bottles and kept them in the fridge, I know guidance these days says not to, but I was happy to do this following some research). The other option is to express some milk if you are EBF and then add the colief to that. He was like this from about 3/4 weeks until 12, and we just dropped the colief at feeds over a week, with the night feeds being the last one.

In terms of sleep, I re-arranged our room so that the next to me was able to be away from the foot of the bed and I wore earplugs. It meant I couldn't just lie there being able to see DS which gave me sleep anxiety, and the earplugs took the edge off the noise but I could still hear him if he woke up hungry. Once I knew the earplugs worked I then actually made DH sleep in the spare room so that I didn't have to listen to him snore which made it harder for me to fall asleep, and then he would take over from 5am. I would go to the spare room to pump and then sleep and he would do the next feed while I slept in peace and quiet. (I personally was very take it or leave it with EBF so this morning feed quickly turned to a formula feed so I didn't even have to pump and I was loving the extra sleep!)

My baby is exactly the same at 11w. It's been dismissed as colic in my case but I am pretty sure he has a dairy intolerance. We tried colief (and every other colic solution on the shelf) and nothing worked here personally!