Hi, I'm hoping someone can give me some advice. I have a 10 week old angel/textbook baby who had been on an excellent 3hr routine until 2 weeks ago, when he started getting painful reflux.
After several days of the symptoms the doctor prescribed infant gaviscon which has stopped him bringing up milk and he no longer screams/arches back from the reflux. However, he is now crying and fussing through his feeds, and every feed has become quite difficult. He now takes around 60-110ml now (instead of 140ml before), except for the dream feed or night feeds, when he eats between 120-170mll
I try to burp him several times as I know some of the fussing is wind, but he still cries after he burps and he cries if you take the bottle away (he never used to mind). Towards the end of feeds he often cries for more milk but after several sips will cry and push the bottle out (he'll keep doing this so I stop after a few times). Once he's finished he'll cry either straight away, or will sit happily for 5 minutes or so and then cry. He can usually be soothed by walking around or laying on his activity may (th reflux doesn't seem to effect him lying down shortly after feeds).
This has effected the other areas of his routine: he can't handle staying awake as long as he used to (now he can sometimes only handle a 40/50 minute awake time), he doesn't nap as long as he used to, and he's begun waking more at night for feeds. No two days are the same now as his feeding times vary through the day, but we're roughly on a 2-2.5hr cycle now. Thankfully he's still excellent at nights, going down easily after his bath at 7:30pm and sleeping until 7/7:30am.
Having read the BW books previously and browsed this forum I think I understand all of these knock-on effects - his crying is exhausting him so he can't handle being awake so long. Because he wasn't awake for very long he doesn't need to nap for so long (or he's waking up early because he's hungry), and his 1-2am night feed has returned because he's not getting enough milk during the day.
My plan is to try EAEASY with the aim of giving him 140ml (ish) over the two feeds, allowing us in time to increase his awake time to what it used to be (around 1-1.5hours, varying throughout the day) and thus improving his nap lengths and putting us back into a roughly 3hr cycle.
I'm not sure this will address his crying though as I'm not quite sure why he's crying - it doesn't sound like he's in pain, I think it's a mixture of hunger initially and then being fed up/distressed. Maybe he's developed an issue with feeding, even though he's longer struggling with the reflux each feed?
We've also tried changing formula and increasing the teat size but they haven't helped.
Can anyone offer any advice on this situation? I hate seeing him so distressed so often in the day and I don't want him to find feed times stressful. I'm avoiding feeding in public because it's such an ordeal, and i'm also concerned that he'll get used to taking most of his calories during the night and so he'll continue to want less in the day, even when he's feeding ok again.
If you need any specifics i'll do my best to provide them. Thanks!
