A year of 'colicky' hell, where do we begin????

[pevie]

We have had an incredibly tough year of very little sleep. It gets a tiny bit better and then goes back to being hellish again!!!! DD2 is an incredibly windy baby and always has been. They think reflux and she has been medicated for this. A lot of the symptoms have abated but she still gets horrendous wind that seems to wake her up. We are caught up in a vicious circle, cos when she wakes uncomfortable - pulling up legs, belly gurgling, etc. the only thing that seems to settle her is to feed her (she is still bf at night) but then she drops off and gets really bad wind again!!!! She is rocked to sleep at bedtime and I know we have to tackle this first probably but dont know best way to go. Also how do we cut out night feeding when she still seems uncomfortable at times. Anyone else had experience of such a windy baby and how did you tackle it!!!!!! Also any idea why she gets such a gurgly tummy some nights and other nights isnt too bad. At moment she is up a few times late evening middle of night and then we get no real sleep from about 4 cos she is so windy!!!! HELP please.

Hi pevie. I think I've talked to you on this subject before, but can't remember details of the post. Have you tried putting her (and therefore yourself) on a dairy free diet? It's quite common for reflux and milk intolerance to be paired.

Yes tried dairy free when was still exclusively bf, no significant difference. She is now on soya during day although still bf at night and I am no longer dairy free. Consultant at hospital didnt think likely to be dairy as not typical symptoms but am not convinced. We did go for endoscopy so waiting results to see if anymore conclusive. I think we have talked before, did your LO have similar thing, what happened again????? Dont think I can take another year of this.

Hi Pevie, how is your lo during the day with wind? The reason I ask is that DS2 is also a very windy baby and used to wake up all hours of the night with trapped wind from both ends - he has massively improved since he stopped needing a feed in the night - think the milk was just lying on his tummy with nowhere to go. We were stuck in a cycle where milk would settle him for a couple of hours but once it started being digested he was windy again. We knew he didn't really need the feeds during the night as it was really impacting on his day time feeding and he was actually having his 2 biggest feeds during the night . We cut down to one feed quite easily by offering him a dummy when he woke and surprisingly he went back to sleep without too much fuss. We then cut down his second feed very gradually by a oz every couple of nights so that he could make up for the missing oz's during the day. I realise this won't be as easy for you as you're breastfeeding. TBH I think I was partly to blame as every time he woke up I thought he had wind and would pick him out of the cot to wind him which would wake him up then only a feed would get him back to sleep , so we had to break the cycle of him waking, being picked out of the cot and fed. I did this by introducing a dummy even though he had never had one to sleep with before, but it meant I could settle him without picking him up.

One other thing - do you share a room with your lo, we had DS2 in our room for the first 5 and a half months and I used to wake up every time he had a bit of wind, out of deperation one night DH and I slept downstairs and he didn't stir until 4.30am!!! think part of the problem was that we could hear every nise when he was at the foot of the bed, so we continued sleeping downstairs until he was reliably through the night and now he is in with DS1 and is much more settled.

I don't have any experience of reflux though so sorry if this is no help, but thinking of you x

Sorry for the essay!!!

My dd was milk intolerant (diagnosed at 15/16 weeks) and had silent reflux (diagnosed around 5 months). I went dairy free and it sorted out most of her problems (screaming about 20 hours a day, always miserable, constant pooing and horrendous nappy rash), and gaviscon was enough for us to be able to cope with her reflux.

Is your dd on ranitadine? From what I've read the doses need regularly changing, and there are other drugs which sometimes work better. It's good that at least she is being given further tests, and I really hope that they provide you with a resolution.

Do you use gripe water when she is windy btw? Found this really good with dd.

Thats helpful as we feel feeding does make it much worse, but sometimes she does wake about 10 letting off, so its difficult to know what to do at that time. I do generally try to settle her if she wakes for first time but if shes windy she'll wake about an hour later whereas if you feed her you might get 3 hours so feel a bit stuck. Last week she wasnt waking for first feed until about 12ish so she obviously doesnt really need it before that. Would have to wean her slowly I guess, just dont know how as even without feeding she still seems windy at beginning of night. Am at loss as to how with all the wonderful developments in world we still dont know what to do about babies wind?????

Hi Pevie - god I know, a windy baby is nightmare - DS1 was never like this so was a bit confused when DS2 came along - think we could have bought shares in infacol the amount of bottles we were going through! Was there no improvement when she started on solids as we saw a definite improvement with DS2 when we introduced solids. As Cantsleepwontsleep says it might be worth looking at dairy free again, I think it can take up to 2 weeks before all traces are out of your system so you prob wouldn't see an immediate improvement.

Also, have you considered taking your lo to a chiropractor or cranial osteopath - we took DS" to a chiropractor specialising in the treatment of babies and she helped enormously - as well as adjusting him she showed me some really good winding techniques. hth