Nighttime discomfort

[cook2142]

Hi,

my wife and I have been struggling with finding ways to sooth our three week LO at night. She has a period from 9 PM to 1AM each night that involves what seems like pretty extreme restlessness and perhaps pain. No matter what we do (swaddle, shush, bounce, swing, hum, sing) she doesn't calm down. During this, she cries intensely, her entire body tenses up and she attempts to swing her arms and kick her feet. It's actually quite hard to hold her in a comfortable position because of all the movement. 

We've tried increasing her A time during the day, as she sleeps well during the day. This hasn't paid off for us either. 

Any advice or suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Clay

[Erin M]

Hi Clay--
3 weeks is so very, very young -- she actually sounds a lot like my ds at that age.  She could be a little bit day/night reversed at this point (which is what I think was the case with my son -- once he hit the 6 week mark or so he was awake more during the day and lost the middle of the night fussy period).
It could be related to discomfort as well.  Do you get good burps up after each feed?  Any signs of reflux? Reflux 101 - General reflux information

Even if its not reflux (might not be, some babies are just super fussy for no apparent reason at that age), this link has a lot of good tips to help calm any baby: tips for calming my refluxing LO

As far as A time goes, at 3 weeks, there's not much you can do while they're awake other than get a feed and a diaper change in.  If you push it too far, you're just going to end up with an overtired baby. 

There's also some good advice on the early days here: Getting started - how I survived the first 3 months