I'm a first time mum to a 3 month old baby and am exclusively breastfeeding her. For the first several weeks she wouldn't sleep unless she was held so my wife (we're both female) and I took shifts - she was also cluster feeding at night for weeks so I thought I might lose my mind. We gradually transitioned to bedsharing (safe sleep 7), feeding to sleep in bed and sidelying feeding at night, with me and the baby in the bed and my wife in the spare room, and this worked well for a little while - she woke up fairly regularly but comfortably in the realms of normal for a newborn, and everyone got some sleep!
From around 8 weeks she did (what the internet has told me is typical) the newborn really loud sleep, grunting and squirming and sounding in pain, but eventually learned to pass her wind in her sleep and we had a few decent nights - possibly even a week but it's all blurred together a bit. She also farts and burps really well in the day now (and looks adorably delighted with herself after she farts).
Two weeks ago she had a few nights of waking up every 20 minutes but settling quite quickly. Couple of nights of decent sleep and then for the last week or so she's woken up around 2am every night squirming, arching her back, pulling her own hair and then eventually waking up fully crying (with one or two wakes/easy settles earlier in the night for a feed). It seems like her wind has got worse again but she's not able to fart in her sleep at night now. I've tried rubbing her tummy, bicycle legs and other movements that used to work, but the only thing that helps her is me sitting up in bed, putting her over my shoulder and letting her sleep there. I do this for a few hours in the middle of the night and then my wife takes over for a couple of hours in the morning so we both get a bit of sleep. If we try to put her in the bed again after she's slept on us for a bit she immediately starts squirming/arching/crying again. She doesn't seem to pass any wind when she's lying on us so I guess it's still in there but she doesn't seem to be in pain in that position. She also only very rarely wakes up for a feed after 2am when she's in that position.
We hadn't tried any remedies for wind because the NHS says they're unevidenced and the first time round it seemed to be getting better on its own (other internet forums basically said this is a normal stage and they will learn to fart - and she did!). But I'm not sure what to do now - is it a (new) medical problem? A sleep problem? A food problem? Or like everything else, is it a phase and will pass like the last one and we just have to ride it out? We don't think she's ill as she's fine during the day, normal nappies etc.
Sorry this is so long and rambling - I'm exhausted at the moment. I'm not sure what I'm looking for really - maybe other people's experiences or advice, or just solidarity! I sort of thought it might start getting better by now (sleeping longer stretches etc.) but it feels like we've gone backwards and I'm so tired. And we're not even at the 4 month regression yet!