HELP!! (long)

[ellenaaron]

I need help. 

My daughter Allison is 8 weeks old, and she usually wakes up about 2 – 3 times per night and seems hungry so I nurse her.  Usually she goes right back to sleep.  Sometimes, however, after the 3 – 4am feeding (and occasionally, like last night, after the 1 – 2am feeding) she isn’t able to settle back down and will start grunting/fussing for hours and nothing I do seems to help. My best guess has been that she is experiencing some sort of discomfort, but I can’t figure out exactly what is going on and how to help her sleep. 

I am exhausted and barely able to function during the day.

I need a baby-whispering sleep detective to help me figure out what is going on!  Here’s some background info:

She has been on EASY for a while --  I did it as best I could as soon as she was born, but she was a small baby (just barely above 6.5 pounds) and so sleepy for the first few weeks that she would fall asleep nursing and NOTHING would wake her up.  So really she’s only been on a true routine for about a month now.

She eats (breastfeeds) every 2 – 3 hours.  In the mornings and evenings she tends to wake up from her nap 2 – 2.5  hours after her last feed, but in the afternoons she is very sleepy and I often have to wake her up to feed her, 3 hours after her last feed.  I never rush in at little noises she makes during naps unless it has been at least 2.5 hours; I only go in if she is fussing really hard or crying.

She only nurses for about 5 – 10 minutes total at each feed.  For the first few weeks she would fall asleep after a few minutes of nursing and NOTHING would wake her up.  For the last few weeks, though, she doesn’t usually fall asleep nursing, but after approx. 10 minutes or less she pulls off the breast and refuses to suck any more.  Milk supply is not a problem, because I did a yield and pumped 4 ounces in 5 minutes just from one side.  Her weight gain has been fine. Her latch is fine.  Maybe she has a “snacker” problem, but I don’t know – she still doesn’t nurse for any longer than 10 minutes even when I feed her after 3 hours.  Her feeding intervals are so irregular, it’s hard to do what the book says and hold her off with a pacifier for 10 minutes more each day, because it’s not like she has a consistent 2 hour habit to change – it’s different every time! 

She falls asleep lying in her own bed, swaddled, with no crying or fussing.  She has an 8:30 bedtime and a consistent bedtime routine.  She sleeps in her own bed (a bassinet) but I do have it in our room next to our bed, because she still wakes up so often at night.  I plan on moving her bed into her room as soon as I can get her sleeping better at night.
We usually cluster feed in the evenings, and I try to do dream feeds as often as I can, but sometimes when I try to do a dream feed I just can’t get her to start sucking.

She almost always needs the pacifier to fall asleep, but occasionally she will fall asleep without it.  If it falls out of her mouth during her first light sleep phase, she will cry and fuss strongly until I put it back in.  If it falls out after she is in a deep sleep, though, that doesn’t bother her.

Sometimes she seems hungry so frequently!  This morning she was hungry 1 hour after her last feed. I know it was hunger, not tiredness, because she was crying her distinctive hungry cry and kept crying even after I gave her a pacifier and laid her in her bed.  I went ahead and fed her, but then she got sleepy a few minutes later and now we are totally off our routine because she’ll wake up long before it’s time for her to feed again.  Maybe she is having a growth spurt?  But even for a growth spurt, 1 hour seems like a very short interval. 

I am having trouble figuring out how to balance responding to her sleepy cues  vs keeping her awake during the day enough so that she will sleep okay at night.  She gets sleepy after being awake about an hour (including nursing time), and if I keep her awake after that she gets very fussy and agitated. 

She is mostly an angel temperament, but she does have a little bit of touchy and spirited in her.  She rarely cries, is mostly calm and sweet-tempered, and things like loud noises don’t bother her. 

She spits up a lot, but it doesn’t usually seem to bother her.  She doesn’t act uncomfortable when lying flat on her back, so I doubt she has reflux pain.

I am currently not eating dairy products because I was dairy intolerant as a baby and so was my 3 year old son if I ate dairy while nursing him.  But, last night I ate a lot of nuts – could a nut allergy be the problem?  The thought of an elimination diet is horrifying, though – if I don’t eat dairy, wheat, eggs, nuts, soy, or seafood for 2 weeks, that leaves almost nothing I could eat!!

So now the current problem:  the grunting/fussing that starts between 2am and 4am and goes on for hours.  A month ago this was happening every night.  Then I started swaddling and the problem seemed to go away for a while.  But lately it’s been happening again, not every night but several times per week.  Last night was the worst in a while.  I’ve checked for coldness, hotness, and other discomfort, and sometimes addressing these things by putting her in different pajamas etc seems to help, but there’s no rhyme or reason to it.  Sometimes a pacifier or other soothing will help her for a few minutes but even then, she can only stay asleep for a few minutes at a time, and keeps waking up and fussing every few minutes.  Sometimes after I have tried everything else I will nurse her to see if she is hungry.  Last night she pooped after fussing for a while (and after I had nursed her in desperation), and at times I’ve thought maybe these fussing episodes were from her trying to pass a bowel movement; however, during the day she never fusses before making a poop. Besides, she still fussed for a while last night after she made that poop.

Okay, sorry that was so long.  Can anyone help me figure out what's going on, like Tracy does in her books?  Perhaps a moderator or other person with baby whisperer training?  (I was so sad to hear of Tracy’s passing, by the way…)

Thank you very much,
Ellen 
(daughter Allison 8 weeks old
+ son Nathan 3.5 years old)
 

[corrina01]

((((((((((((((((((((((HUGS)))))))))))))))))))))))))) to you first of all.

After reading your post, I immediately thought of my DD, when she was at that age.

First things first, (I will refer to my DD alot in this post)

Most babies are up on average 2 times a night to feed, but that will gradually turn into 1 a night.

My DD at this age fed every 2.5hrs (she was 5lb 9oz at birth), until about 3 months, were we gradually weaned her onto a 3hr EASY using the dummy/pacifier to hold her off.

Her sleeping is fine, my DD could only just make 45 mins of awake time, for a long while.

Maybe she is a quick eater, my DD could take a 3oz bottle in 10 mins. But she isn't a snacker.

The grunting and the fussing, I know it so well.

It is probably due to gas, as she is a quick eater and has more frequent feeds.

All you can do is:

Rub her tummy in a circular motion.
Stroke her tummy from chest down to pelvic bone.
If she is awake, put her up to your shoulder, and pat her bum so she knows where to pass it from.
During A times if you can manage, bicycle her legs up in the air, or push her legs to her stomach hold for 10 secs, and then shake her legs down.

That will take a while for her to get to know, where she has to pass it from, but if your DD is anything like my DD, she will be a champion at passing wind.

HTH

[HeatherC]

Yes, my dd had gas issues at night around that age as well.  Don't know why it started just when it did, but she would do the same grunting off and on during the wee hours of the morning.  We gave her gas drops (commonly known as Mylicon in the US, but there are generic forms) before or after each feed, and before going to bed.  The drops are completely harmless.  Even as she got older and was bottle fed, we put the drops in the bottle to cut down on the foam.  But her gassiness occured when she was breastfed, and she was a slow eater.  She also weighed about the same as your dd at birth.  The only thing I've read about preventing snacking is to hold them off for longer intervals between feeds.
Sounds like you're really doing a great job and are very in tune with your baby.  Congrats and best wishes.  Keep us posted.

[Mum of girl, boy, boy]

Hi there,

Sorry to hear you are having a tough time. I hope I can share the experience I am going through with my son right now and it helps. If not I am sure someone else out there will offer some experiences of their own.

Firstly. My son was born three weeks early and was 6lb 7oz. Similar weight to your baby. I tried to do EASY in the early days but like you all that baby wanted to was sleep and would often fall asleep on the boob or be impossible to wake to get feeds in. If I share what has just happened you can take what you want from it and compare to your own story.

So here goes:

DS born 3 weeks early. Spent the first few weeks asleep and not doing to much except feeding. Quick feeder (no more than 10 mins generally although he someones takes more but not very often). Seems efficient. The time between feeds seems to have stayed the same in the day. Around 3 1/2 hours - very occasionally 4 hours if out etc.

Activity - This is still very short and sometimes hard to keep to EASY. It can end up EASAE or EASASE. My priority is to avoid overtiredness so sometimes that means putting him down again. In the early days I thought he was sleeping too much especially because I had read somewhere that they only needed 4hours sleep in the day. When I started listening to DS he was telling me after 30 / 45 mins it was time for bed. He would let out two wahh wahh cries and I would take him up straight away. How long is your activity? For me this was the hardest cue. If I don't get him down at this point it will go into a cry that I could only get back with a dummy / boob / rocking etc so I have to get it first time. Naps end up too short if I miss the cue and then I can fall into the trap of feeding before a nap in the hope he will sleep longer. The truth is it never really works 1) too knackered to feed well 2) not really ready for a feed etc. I have to really hold myself back from feeding to resolve. Also DS wakes up too many times in the night if he hasn't taken full feeds during the day.

Sleep - This was where it reminded me of my DS. Up until 9 weeks DS was more unsettled the second half of the night. He would grunt and make so much noise. (I moved him out very early because it was driving me mad). When he was in the room with us I would jump in at the unsettled noise so I thought it was better to move him out. Does your baby still poo at night. My son was pooing all the time and the health visitor assured me that it would settle down. There is now less waste (thicker) and he poos every three or four days. The grunting etc has stopped, well it only starts up a few hours before a poo is due. My daughter weighed alot more and she settled down much quicker. I worked out that on weight we were 3/4 weeks behind this time with DS and like clock work my DS slept through at 12 weeks where as my daughter did at 8 weeks (big baby). The other important factor was that they both found there thumb. Something that I encouraged. I would swaddle after 8weeks with one had out. When overtired though DS isn't accurate enough so I sometimes use a dummy to keep him on track but I try and make sure I don't do this at the following nap.

So in summary it wasn't until the bowels changed and he weighed about 11 / 12lb, then the nights got easier. If you reckon this could be part of it don't give in just yet.

I hope this helps. I am sure someone will be along shortly to offer better advice than me.

Good luck. Hang in there.

J