Wind causing big sleep issues

[cocosmum]

Hi, since 3 weeks my DD has had terrible wind. She is exclusively breastfed and is now nearly 10 weeks old. She has also had horrendous nappy rash (raw patches all over her bum) and pretty green poos. I had read something recently that someone had similar issues and it was caused by over supply and baby getting too much milk. I therefore started not to push her too much with feeding and let her have a little less each feed and within a couple of days her poos were yellow and her raw bum had really started to heal after weeks of being raw but the wind is still just as bad.

She goes down ok at night, I put her to bed at 7pm and quite often I have to go in and settle her 15 minutes later but she then stays down till dream feed. She was then having a feed around 2.30am and then another at 5am until about ten days ago when I suspected she was waking at 5am due to wind (she was only feeding for a few minutes) so instead of feeding her I let her sleep on me till 7am (I couldn't get her settled back into her cot) and she made no sign of wanting to be fed and wasn't even desperate for it at 7am. Since then I haven't offered her a feed when she wakes anywhere between 5 and 6am, she always seems windy (thrusting legs out, grunting and straining  and crying) and I am only ever able to settle her back into her cot for max half an hour before she starts again so I have to let her sleep on me till 7am.

Her morning naps are a total nightmare, the first nap I get between 15 minutes and an hour max in numerous goes with me running in and out for the whole two hours picking her up, letting her settle on me till she is calm for a minute or two and then putting her back down. Sometimes I can spend the whole nap doing this, sometimes she will sleep for up to half an hour but between he first two naps I am not getting more than 1 hr 45 minutes of sleep but that is in many small chunks. Not always but quite often she will then do a long afternoon nap sometimes, often I will have to resettle her once or twice and occasionally not at all and then the cat nap takes a bit of effort too, often I have to let her sleep on me in order to ensure she gets even just twenty minutes by time I have tried to get her down.

She was going down pretty easily for her naps until a week or so ago (not sure if I am now also dealing with wonder week 8 ontop of this) but now it can take me four or five goes just to get her to sleep only for her to wake 15 mins later.

I am certain it is wind rather than reflux as she is happy when awake for the most part and after feeds. All the behaviours I see are grunting straining, thrusting legs down and farting (or not when the wind is more trapped).

I am worried at how much settling I have to give her and that she has to sleep on me from 5am and that she will never be able to self soothe and that I am creating huge problems for myself but I don't see what else I can do when she is in pain.

Oh and one last thing re nighttime sleep. Last night she woke earlier than normal for her 2.30/3am feed and seemed windy again and not hungry so I tried to settle her back in cot but had to let her sleep on me in the end. An hour later I put her back in her cot and she slept for another half hour till 4am so way past her 2.30am feed so I fed her then.  She then went back down and stayed down till 6.50am despite various spells of grunting. She is almost 6kg so I feel should be able to manage at night with dream feed plus only one other feed but I am feeling so confused and stressed by all the resettling I am having to do, which is made even harder by the fact I also have a two year old.

[cocosmum]

Sorry I should also have said she is on infacol, and tried other things, I have tried all kinds of massage and exercises on her but nothing makes any difference. I really don't want to start obsessing over my diet as I feel it is better that she gets good nutrition from me having a balanced diet.

[becj86]

Hi, I had horrendous issues with oversupply and overactive letdown when DS was a baby. I found a few tricks helped:
- laid-back feeding... google biological nurturing, they have a great video that shows how. I just lay back in a recliner chair, that was good because I could sit back up again when letdown was over and the flow slowed as DS was pretty picky about how hard he had to work. I also fed lying on grassy hills at mothers group,  in the bathtub when it was too hot to feed comfortably, etc.
- massage the breast up near the chest wall (not on the areola) to release some fat from the walls of the ducts before LO starts feeding, helps with the foremilk overload that was giving you green poos if it happens again,  also helps ensure LO gets more of the fats before they're full.
- block feeding can help reduce supply to more reasonable level. Your blocks can be long or short - feed from one side for one feed, the other for the next feed (let the one that's full stay full as much as you can comfortably do as that's the feedback mechanism to tell your body not to make as much milk. My blocks got to 12hr - one breast for day, one for night at some stage there.
- Massage... has to be the same direction as the colon moves, so in a rainbow shape basically with the heel of your hand at the bottom of his tummy in the middle. Sweep your fingers from her right to her left. Also push legs up into belly gently to help the gas along.
- find a good way to burp her, especially when your supply is highest. That's at that middle of the night feed and through the morning which is consistent with what you've written. Anything where there's some pressure on her belly helps - on your arm with legs either side of your elbow, hand supporting head; sitting on your lap (only once she can hold up her own head because you have to put on hand on her belly and the other does the massaging); over your shoulder...
- infacol can be good or bad for LOs with gas. It makes bubbles join together so it should make burping more efficient but can make trapped wind pain worse. I found DS did better without it.

I think once you get the wind under control, the sleep will come. You're doing well already, so these little tweaks should give her the relief she needs to sleep better.

[becj86]

Oh, its also worth reducing galactagogues - foods that increase milk production. Cutting out my morning oatmeal helped a lot. There are others, its worth looking at if you're not able to see results with these other things. I had been making and eating cookies to make more milk because DS wasn't gaining weight and I was hand expressing in excess of a litre of milk a day and I was being told by my doctor that I clearly had undersupply because he was not gaining weight.

[cocosmum]

Thank you for such a detailed reply. I have never heard of infacol making it worse, I have been double dosing at ever single feed but it certainly doesn't seem to help so I will stop it for a few days and see.