Advice Needed Please!!

[Anna28]

Hi,

My little boy who is nearly 6 weeks old has suddenly started finding feeding very uncomfortable. He was drinking his milk fine up until last Sunday.

He drinks about 3ozs then starts to cry whilst trying to drink more, he thrashes his head around but is still trying desperately to drink, as if he is hungry but finds it too uncomfortable! Its quite disturbing to watch. As soon as we take the bottle out of his mouth the crying stops. We always wind him then try again with no luck. The only way to get more into him is to leave it half an hour then he may take another oz.
Are we trying to give him too much? Before last Sunday he would happily drink 4ozs sometimes even 5. 

The other night I gave him about 3ozs then he had nighttime bath etc as usual, then came back down and gave him another oz, he would normally take a couple of ozs. Put him to bed then 10 mins later he was crying wanting more milk!! So gave him another oz which was enough for him to sleep.  Strange the way he wouldn't take it at the time.

Because of him not taking what he needs we're back to 2 wakes in the night , instead of the one as he only wants/takes 1-2 ozs in the night therefore wakes up really early for more.

If it is colic I assume he'd be uncomfortable afterwards and crying for long periods? He may have a touch of wind but don't think its colic as he isn't crying for long periods.

It feels like the action of drinking is uncomfortable for him. It can't be the teat as we've changed this. I just feel helpless to know what to do. He is getting enough milk for his weight, but this is due to us persisting with breaks in between feeds all the time which ends up taking forever!

The Health Visitor said to try hungrier baby formula as he is feeding quite often and because sometimes we can only get couple of ozs into him he is then very hungry short time after.

Has anyone else had problems like this? Any advice would be appreciated.

Anna x

[AnnaBenwell]

Hi i'm Anna 2! Sounds like wind to me! have you tried anything for wind. My LO Does this when he reaaly has had enough So maybe he's full. He might of just wanted the comfort of sucking to get him to sleep(e.g You thought he was still hungrey so offered the bottle, but all he wanted was a little help gettin 2 sleep) Not sure if that helps. My LO had colic and he cried all the time, So know how hard it can be. Maybe you should just let him feed, when he starts wind him and try again. If he won't have it GIVE UP! Do you stick to times? 3 hours? And for 2nd baby milk my HV Says its to ok for baby under 11 weeks as can make wind pain worse. My little 1 is 5 months and is still on the 1st milk. Anna

[Lolly]

My LO does this too, always after a wind break. If I let him drink all the bottle in one he doesn't do it but will then be sick when he does wind. He drinks the first half fine, we stop to burp and then he fights the second half. My LO is suffering with reflux and I think this is the cause for him as he hasn't done it so often now he has infant gaviscon in his bottles. We get the thrashing around whilst pulling the bottle into his mouth, trying to suck and pushing it away at the same time.

My HV said to stay away from the hungrier baby formulas but we did switch to Cow & Gate stage 1 comfort which did help a bit - have you tried this one? We also tried infacol, dentinox drops and gripe water for the wind. The first two didn't do much and we couldn't get him to take the gripe water - his bib got it all! However some of these do seem to work for some babies, have you tried any of these? Does he have any other issues like spitting up?

Laura

[* Paula *]

Hugs Anna,

Sounds like your lo is going through a rough time.  What size teat are you using?  When my DS was about the same age we were on the 3rd size teat, and things seemed to get a lot better.  We did not go by the age on the teats, as our lo was getting very frustrated with the bottle.

If you can, I would hold off on the hungry baby formula.  When we switched our DS to it at around 4 months it made him extremely constipated so we switched back to the stage 1 formula.

Infacol is very good to help your lo bring up wind.  We used this for our lo and it worked wonders.  There are also drops called Colief which you can add to you lo's milk.  This helps break down the lactose in the formula and makes it easier for your lo to digest.

Hope this info helps.

Paula