in

England

Feeding battles and sleepless nights!

Hi everyone, I’m after some advice from mums that may have experience the same/similar and how (if you have) you resolved this. Currently have a 5 week old girl and I’m a first time mum and feel like I must be doing something wrong.

First of all feeding - She is formula fed and EVERY feed is a complete battle with my little girl. She shows cues for hunger every 2-3 hours, so I make the bottle, try to feed it her, and she starts squirming almost instantly like it’s painful to drink. She squirms so much I take the bottle away for a moment as it’s also dribbling and she splutters and as soon as I do, she screams and I mean SCREAMS. This is a continuous loop for about an hour until she finally seems somewhat content after the battle. It makes me dread the time for feeding which is obviously so often with only an hour or so break in between. Sometimes she’ll only take a very small amount and fall asleep after screaming, and others she’ll take larger amounts but can guarantee she’ll spit up/sick up a lot of the feed if she does. We went to the Doctors after I did some research with suspected Reflux or CMPA and he prescribed gaviscon. Max dose is 6 sachets per day but my girl is drinking around 10 a day, to be mixed with 4oz but she only drinks between 30 and 60ml so she is not getting the full dose. Really struggling with this and have tried own methods - upright/pace feeding, carobel, infacol (she’s difficult to burp). We’ve also now changed her milk yesterday as the Kendamil she was using apparently can cause tummy upset due to its richness. She’s also an extremely noisy drinker, midwives say she has no tongue tie but her latch seems to be extremely poor with excessive clicking, milk pouring down both sides of her face and spluttering milk everywhere in general - she must be swallowing so much air. Have tried various teat sizes and shapes but none seem to change this. Next step for Doctors is apparently Omeprazole - does anyone have experience using this? But I’ve basically convinced myself she has CMPA due to possible tummy pains as well as the reflux symptoms.

Now for sleeping - Since day 1 of bringing her home, she has never settled well. There’s the odd occasion during the day she might stay in the Moses for up to 1 hour but even then she’s restless throughout. I know babies can be loud sleepers but if I don’t pick her up when she’s really unsettled, again she will cry. I’m currently sleeping upstairs with her in my arms and partner downstairs because he works full time but helps where he can. After the nightmare of trying to feed her, I settle her and wait for her to be asleep (have tried both drowsy and deep sleep) and sometimes when I lower her gently into the crib she will be settled for 5 minutes tops and then cry, or she will wake immediately and cry. I have tried the t shirt hack (making it smell like me) the hot water bottles, swaddles, gentle rocking, white noise machine but this is day and night and its relentless. She will sleep soundly on me but this is not sustainable after 5 weeks, I’m becoming delirious from lack of being able to sleep. Again I thought this could be due to reflux, so I always keep her upright on me for at least 30 mins before the transfer but this still doesn’t seem to make a difference. I’m very reluctant to cosleep but even if I wasn’t, just being on her back seems to make her unsettled. Again why I think she has CMPA, as it could be her tummy hurting but it seems to be so hard for Doctors to listen to me because she doesn’t have any skin rashes - which is apparently their way of diagnosing it.

Can anybody please offer any insight into any of this. Me and my partner feel robbed of the newborn days already, and seem to be wishing time away to when she is likely to sleep better in a few months time. It’s heartbreaking to see her suffer, and it’s exhausting trying to manage it all. So sorry for such a long post, but I’m praying there is some sort of a solution without being told ‘she has colic’. TIA.