Sorry took me a while to get back here.
I’ve pulled these two posts you did to highlight a couple of things that really make me agree with Jean and Becky that your LO quite possibly has either some kind of food intolerance or reflux.
He has his fist in his mouth at every available opportunity, and tends to fuss when breastfeeding, and often cries with the bottle (he wants the milk..... takes the bottle but after a few sucks starts crying whilst drinking. I don't think it's wind as I make sure I wind him very frequently, and he still continues to fuss even when a burp comes up).
LO’s who have pain in their oesophagus will do anything to try to alleviate the pain. They think that any liquid going down their throat is going to help. So while sucking on the fist may indicate teeth, it could also be a symptom of an irritated esophagus.
So at eating time, baby has 2 kinds of pain. Hunger pain and ‘reflux’ pain. Baby knows that eating will make one better and one worse. What a terrible decision!
So they eat a little to take the edge of the hunger pain and then stop before the ‘reflux’ pain gets worse. This results in a snacking kind of eating pattern. Fussing even after burping is due to the ‘reflux’ pain.
Since the potential reflux/food allergy thing may take a couple of months to sort out, am I supposed to abandon sleep training in the meanwhile? Ie let my baby dictate when he wants to wake and sleep?
I'm still having the same problems - the early mornings, the short naps, the constant screaming (if I try and put him down after he wakes, he'll scream the whole time until his next feed is due despite yawning).
I'll have to give gaviscon a few weeks to see if it works and don't know what I should be doing whilst waiting that duration.
He's slept 20 minutes in the last 6 and a half hours, and I'm STILL trying to get him down. Do I abandon all now?
No, you do not abandon everything. But you cannot force a child who is in pain to sleep.
You will need to do some sort of APOP (= accidental parenting on purpose) to get your LO a reasonable amount of sleep. He may be very chronically overtired and the short naps are his way of 'taking the edge' off his tiredness IYKWIM without actually getting good restful sleep. He is probably getting crabby when he is put on his side as he associates that with pain also. So if he gets fussy when he is laid on his side, can you teach him to sleep on his back? Which side do you put him down on? He will sleep at night out of sheer exhaustion, but as soon as the “edge” is off his tiredness, the pain will wake him and good luck getting him back to sleep.
So choose some sort of APOP that you feel is relatively easy to undo once you have his discomfort sorted out. If he won’t fall asleep in your arms, then try a different position in his crib.
My DS2 had an EASY “cycle” that was eat (over an hour to take ~ 60 mL
), activity (~ 1-1.5hr) and sleep (~ 45min) until he was almost 6 months old, when I finally convinced a doctor that we needed to make changes to DS2’s medications to FINALLY control his reflux.
It was exhausting, but the only way I could get a decent amount of food and sleep into my son.
Now onto the food intolerances thing. What kind of formula is your LO on? The most common food intolerance is dairy or milk protein intolerance (= MPI). If your LO has MPI then it causes irritation somewhere in the gastrointestinal system. If it shows up in the lower end of the system it causes irritation in the bowels and is diagnosed by blood in the poop either microscopic or visable. If it shows up in the upper end of the system, it causes irritation in the oesophagus and has symptoms that mimic reflux.
To rule out MPI you need to put the LO on a soy or hypoallergenic formula and eliminate dairy from your diet. It will take 2-3 days for the milk proteins to come out of your system, and can take up to 6 weeks for irritation in LO’s system to heal. If you decide to do this, you need to be vigilant at making sure that you take all milk products and things that contain milk protein out for a minimum of 2 weeks. There’s a good list of names that milk protein hides under on the food allergies board.
If you don’t notice a difference, then try reintroducing milk proteins back into your diet one thing at a time. So a glass of milk for instance. Then watch your LO for any sort of reaction. Wait a 4-5 days and then add something else. If you see no obvious difference, then milk isn’t the issue. Try the same thing with eggs and wheat as they are also big things for causing food intolerances.
The idea that all reflux babies will scream when laid flat isn’t true. My DS2 was a happy baby as long as he wasn’t sleeping or eating. He was a fussy eater who would refuse milk from breast or bottle at one stage. He screamed every night for 45 minutes, he napped for 45 minutes every nap, he woke 2-5 times a night for a feed and woke screaming. But never a bad moment on a change table and would tolerate some tummy time.
HTH and (((Hugs)))
