Screaming baby

I am starting to feel like I can't get anything right when it comes to Esmes sleeping and it is starting to wear down my confidence.

She was such an easy baby to start with self settled, fed well and slept beautifully. But as the months have gone on and in particular the past 6 weeks all she seems to do is scream when it comes to bed time during the day and wake several times a night I say scream rather than cry because she is really loud, has real tears, arches her back, waves her arms around tried to pull her ears off etc. I literaly have to hold her arms down and hold her tight so that she doesn't scratch herself while walking, rocking and jiggling to calm her which can take up to 40 minutes. Then we have a period of about 20 minutes where she makes her 'going to sleep noises' but I can't put her down until she stops them and is properly asleep or the screaming starts again. She will then sleep for between 45 minutes and 2 hours but I never know how long she is going to sleep for.

I am pretty sure I'm catching her tired signs early but no matter how long she has been up for we still get the screaming. VERY occasionally she'll go down without a fuss. She'll also fall asleep in the car and in her pram but only when she's sitting up in it. I can lay it down once she's asleep. I was starting to think reflux as she will tone down the screaming when held upright but she is fine on the floor it only happens when it's time for sleep. Plus she hardly spills at all.

NIghttime is another story, she will usually go to sleep without a fuss at night, very occasionally we have to rock but we don't get the screaming. She will go back down after a feed fine but wakes anywhere beteen 2-6 times. (2 times is ok it's when we get 5 times and it's every 1-3 hours)

Everyone says how it gets easier as the get older. For me it's gotten harder and harder.

When you said pulling at her ears, I thought ear infection. Apparently lying down hurts their ears when they have an infection too, which explains why it would be worse around bedtime.

You can still have reflux and not spill....the girls had reflux and they were bringing it up constantly, but swallowing it again, so I couldn't see it (you could hear it though, and if you looked straight afterwards you could see it in their mouths/smell it but it would never come out).

AandCs mum, her bed is raised slightly using phone books (Waikato white and yellow pages) she's had her ears checked a few times and they are clear. She does get ezcema behind them sometimes but this is clear at the moment. Can't say I've noticed the chin up when she's sleeping but I'll keep an eye out for that.

minik8e she used to spill a lot but was always happy with it. She stopped spilling about 2 months ago, we still get the odd one but it is usually accompanied by a burp and when she does spill she doesn't get upset by it.

She spends part of each awake time on her back up to about 30-40minutes and she is happy during this time.

To throw a spanner in the works she went down for her last sleep with no worries at all! But her first one for the day we had the screaming.

Thanks for the hug ginger. I was thinking a trip to an osteo or something would be good, trouble is I don't think there is one close enough to where we live.

Thanks Issacs mum. Some of the symptoms definatley fit but then they are things that a lot of babies do anyway. I think we will head off to the dr this week as it wouldn't hurt to explore the option of medication. If it works we'll know that it was the problem if not at least it'll be one thing ruled out!

We are off to the Dr today with a list of what's been happening even things that don't seem related just in case they are.

The Dr suspects she may have a dairy intollerance her Dad has one but can have some dairy so we are just starting to pull Dairy from my diet atm. It's hard to get extended family to understand that I can't have dairy. We stay with the In laws almost every weekend atm due to DPs work. Even though he couldn't have dairy a lot he could still have a bit so they don't understand about traces of it.

She also gets it in her knee and elbow creases. It's not bad and definately manageable she just gets red patches that look angry and very rarely blisters. We have just started using the Aveeno Baby range and her skin has never felt so soft! The reason we suspect Dairy is weekend before last I had cereal with milk and some icecream (twice!) and she had a major flare up which we went to the Dr for last week. Lucky it's free for her here!

DS started gaviscon at 4mths 1wk. I tried by spoon (about 50/50 success), and then he started FF so it was just in the bottle.
Tommy Tippie (sp) has these little medication teat things though I've never tried them.
I'd try a syringe.

Syringe into their cheek. We are BFing as well.

We still had the waking until we went on to Omeprazol/Losec. But we had less wake ups with Gaviscon, as long as we were giving maximum dosage a day.

I found that it soothed quite soon, but it will take at least a week if not longer to repair the damage. I sorta glossed over this when I first went on gaviscon, but when I missed two doses of the Omeprazol a few weeks ago we didn't have our happy baby back for a week.

The thing I noticed first was there was less squirming at night.

I've also discovered even though a little bit of dairy is ok for me, Cooper reacts to trace amounts too. I'm going to get skin pricks this arvo!!! If I get out of the house

You are more than welcome to threadjack T_Rex.

I have tried the syringe with Esme but didn't have a lot of luck and managed about half. But this seems to have helped so I thought we might stick with 1 sachet at a time (she's 7.8kg!) until we get the hang of it so it doesn't keep going to waste. It has been so nice putting her down to sleep without the screaming. All we have had today is a bit of grizzling.

Of those of you whose bubs have reflux do they scratch at their neck? I've noticed that when Esme gets grizzly and squirmy her hands go straight to her neck at first I thought it might have been because she was itchy due to her ezcema although there is no rash there but now think it could be related to reflux?

Yep you can get syringes from the chemist...they vary between 60c and $1.20 each (depending on the chemist) down here. They usually have 3ml, 5ml and 10ml ones to choose from. When we give the girls syringe stuff, we just slowly and constantly push the plunger so it's a steady stream.

Sounds like your baby is in pain. If it's been just for a little while - could be something like earache or sore throat or something (my guess is earache because of the pulling of ears - but sometimes they do this when they are tired). If long-term, more likely to be reflux.

My baby was really good and fairly settled and started screaming particularly when going to bed, and more grizzly during playtime... people suggested everything under the sun and turned out he had a throat infection. So definitely go to the DR as soon as possible and rule everything out then talk possibly signs of reflux.