Hi everyone, i'd really appreciate any advice and thoughts regarding my 4 week old baby boy. I'm a first time mum and am very anxious and paranoid about everything at the moment...i'm hoping that;s normal, no one prepares you for how protective and emotional you feel about them! Dylan was born 3 weeks early by c section, he was very mucusy for the first week but seems to have had ongoing problems since then. The main problem is he seems to be in a lot of discomfort a lot of the time. He makes awful straining noises and goes red, throws head back etc. He doesn't cry though and after a few seconds the "spasm" goes away completely, only to return a few minutes later. Some days are worse than others and he always seems worse when drifting off to sleep and when waking up and after feeds. They get really bad from early hours of the morning too, for example this morning he was doing it from 3am onwards! He is on gaviscon for silent reflux, but still seems to have the problem. I've tried allsorts i.e colief, lactose free milk, infacol. Have taken him to Docs a couple of times but he's gaining weight and otherwise healthy so no one seems concerned. I feel like i'm going out of my mind, he sounds in such distress at times and that awful noise in th middle of the night is really gets me worried. Just wish i knew what was causing it so i could know what to give him, i feeel like i'm trying too any things and not knowing whats helping and whats not! Sorry to go on but i'm getting desperate, feel like i can't enjoy things roperly at the moment cos i'm constantly worrying about him. Any advice or input would be greatly appreciated!
Going from when your baby is due he is only a week old, so theres nothing wrong with worring, its a natural thing for us Mums, and we dont stop! I am no expert on prem babies but i know they have different 'habbits' to term babies who can also have some funny habbits! Speak to your midwife and explain how he behaves and even take video if he does not do it when you take him in or you cant describe it very well. My daughter freaked me out when she was newborn doing these funny twitchy movements, and i am a Mum of 4, it was still something i had never seen!
Get it checked out just for peace of mind and so you can enjoy him!
is he laid totally flat when doing this? If he has silent refulx he needs to be angled up slighlty on a wedge for example. It could be the acid rising regularly. My dd was almost 4 week early and had reflux she had a wedge to sleep on which helped loads. this is what she had http://www.babyreflux.co.uk/products/Supreme-Sleep-%28R...leep-Positioner.html
id still be tempted to speak with a hv though so they have it on record. Does he seem worse on an evening
sweet i know how horrible it can be, my ds has sleep mycosis, its sudden twitching movements xcatley what you described, no one worked this out until me n dh spent 46 hrs in hospital when ds was three days old, he was given all kinds, i would recommened not to get to freaked out, i know how hard it is i went loopy, i didnt sleep for 9 days solid until i fainted incase some thing happened to him or someone didnt take care of him, i know its crazy but you have to stay in control,
I whould recommend that you go to your gp, midwifes and hv can be very dismissivie i kno this first hand, ask to be refered to a pedretrition consultant asap......
And do not leave until you ahve a referal.
also i would def do as the others have said put the wedge under the bed and also take a film of the episode, i did loads of short films.
I have also purchased a breathing monitor which is
Thanks for the advice. He is sleeeping proppped up which helps the reflux slightly i think. Over the last couple of days i think some of his straining noises may be due to constipation, i recently converted him onto formula, although still give a bottle of expressed milk during the day. This along with the gaviscon i think is causing him to become bunged up! His stools are firm and sometimes only a tiny amount despite a lot of straining and botty burps! I've been giving him cooled boiled water more frequently but doesn't seem to have changed. I'm not sure wether orange juice in water would make his reflux worse? Any ideas?
I would say stick with milk for a while unless advised by midwife or doctor. Little babies can strain quite a lot, and i understand formula can make babies constipaited. My daughter did not get on with my milk at all, she was very sicky, and would not take formula so i had to breast feed and hope she was not too sick. Are you sure the gaviscon is helping? It may not be agreeing with him? Its trial and error i am affraid, and if your baby is putting on sufficent weight like the doctor says then it will just be time, try a few different things one at a time, any changes you make just do one than you will know what has helped or not. Keep trying, you will find what is bothering him, prob just a little tummy struggling with something other than what he had while he was in you!
Hi Helz I am having exactly that same issue with my 6 week old baby boy! It is so terrible to see them like this. I am actually on visit number 4 to the hospital to try and get someone to diagnose him or at least recognise the problem and try and help me to solve it this afternoon. I am not holding out much hope as I seem to be constantly going round in circles. It all started with just the silent reflux (diagnosed myself via reading forums) and then after 2 weeks or so progressed to this awful straining day and night but as you say worse during the early hours. He also has lots of bottom burps and seems to have a bit of relief just after a bout of them! The straining started around the time that I tried him on infant gaviscon which also really constipated him so I immediately took him off and put him onto cow and gate carobel in his milk as this was the alternative that I was offered to the gaviscon to help the silent reflux. So far I have tried everything - propped up moses basket, change of formula to cow and gate comfort, gaviscon (which I took him off after the constipation), infacol (I give him this still with each feed), dentinox (didn't help), colif (didn't help) and gripe water (use this now and then to get the wind up. I am in a bit of a rush as got to go and prepare bag and feed to take to hospital appointment but please let me know if you are still around and still have this problem or have solved it and I will come back on later and let you know how I get on today. I have now made a recording of my son doing this in the middle of the night to show them today as the other problem I have is that the appointments are always in the afternoon which is the only time that he manages to get a bit of a rest with only very mild straining. As a consequence I am sure that they think that I am just a paranoid new Mum! Oliver as also got a hydrocele which at first they thought was a hernia and of course I thought had been caused by the straining. They assure me however that they are sure that it is just a hydrocele - it's all so confusing! Take care Emma x
Am so sorry to hear you're going through the same thing, but in another way it's a relief to hear from someone sufferring the same anguish as no one seems to understand and it's such a hard thing to explain to people. The medics seem to write it off as he's gaining weight and is generally healthy in every other way but it's such a disruption to his (and my) sleep and SOOOO frustrating cos something is obviously going on it's just a question of finding out what! Dylan is now 8 weeks and still doing the straining/grunting during his sleep, still worse after 4am. He also does this thing when he's drifting off to sleep, he seems fast asleep and content for about 10 mins then he starts licking his lips and gulping then has a straining episode where he lifts his head, arches back and roots and before we know it he's awake again!! We had our first consultant appt 2 weeks ago, he went for a barium scan to investigate reflux, we get results tomorrow but i don't think it showed much. This is obviously a good thing but means no nearer to sorting out problem. He was also put on ranitidine for acid but it's made no difference. How did you get on at your appointment? I'm finding myself considering allsorts eg lactose/milk intolerance, sleep apnoea, it's driving me crazy!! I too have videod him and will show consultant tomorrow. Let me know how you're getting on! Helz X
Hi Again Thanks for your reply. The hospital appointment with the doctor was another disaster, they sent me away telling me that it is colic! I questioned how it could be colic when it is ongoing for around 75/80% of his day and I told them that I thought it was gastrooesophageal reflux but I think sometimes they just find it easier to diagnose something easy to deal with. Oliver is now actually constipated and passing hard stools so the straining has now got even worse! He does all the things that you describe. Having come out of the appointment last week no further on I too started to think about lactose intollerance etc and went to Boots to look at the different milks. Oliver was on Cow and Gate Comfort with Carobel for his silent reflux having moved off SMA gold when the reflux first started. On Friday I put him on SMA stay down as I noticed that it states on the tin that this is a milk for babies with significant reflux. I also started bits of the Gina Ford contented baby routine. I can't stick to the entire thing as it is to routined for me but I am picking out certain bits. On Friday and Saturday he certainly seemed much more settled with the change of milk and the new routine. There is no change to his reflux on the SMA so to save putting the carobel in his milk I am stucking to the SMA stay down for now. He is now actually a lot quieter through the night, or at least he was until his constipation started! I am now (on the 'advice' of the health visitor) adding prune or apple juice to water to try and get rid of the constipation and hoping that if this happen added to the fact that for the first two days before the constipation he was a lot more settled I might just be starting to get somewhere. As you can imagine however i am holding out no hope but will let you know how we get on! Let me know how your appointment is! Emma x
Sorry to hear Oliver now has constipation...it's one thing after another isn't it?! Dylan was constipated when i first put him on formula feeds, the GP prescribed lactulose syrup, just a small dose 2xdaily and the next day we were sorted. It just softens the stools making them easier to pass. I also give him regular sips of water between feeds now and it seems to be keeping him regular. Our hospital appt too was a waste of time, they didn't even have the results of the barium scan so nothing was changed. Hoping to hear about the scan results by the end of the week. In the meantime he continues to grunt and strain in his sleep day and night! Like you i'm starting to lose hope..every time i try something new i get my hopes up and then the horible noises start again, it really gets youdown doesn't it! I have to keep telling myself there are much worse things he could have, but it's the not knowing what's causing it that's the most frustrating thing! I too have been roughly following the Gina Ford routine, he's pretty good really on a 3 hour routine in the day. There's no way i can put him down 'drowsy but awake' though as he just starts straining until he's completely wide awake. Unfortunately at the moment we have to wait til he's fast asleep on one of us before putting him down. It's also difficult inthe night to know when he actually needs feeding as he doesn't cry as such but his noises get louder and more frequent! I think i'll give the stay down milk a try...at this point i'm willing to try anything! Is Oliver well otherwise, gaining weight etc? Does he seem uncomfortable and really noisy when you wind him? That's another thing Dylan does. Happy straining! H xxx
Hello again Sorry to hear that the hospital appointment was no good. The hospital was going to prescribe some lactelose for Oliver last week until they realised that at that time he wasn't actually constipated so they decided not to! I might go back to the doctors with him and see if I can get some now that he IS constipated!! He is actually managing to go to the toilet now but with lots of screaming and crying and is passing really hard poo despite my giving him plently of water and with prune juice in as well! I do think that since putting him on the SMA stay down and introducing the contented routine he seems a lot more settled at night, the straining seems to have really reduced during the night but then I wonder if it might just be that we are so used to it that we sleep through it and only wake when he gets louder or cries for food. As you say though it is actually difficult to tell if they are hungry. I feel as if i will never get him to go through the night as I will probably keep mistaking the grunting for hunger and feeding him! I am not sure if it is becasue he now sleeps more at night but for the first few days I had a good routine going with him in the daytime and I even managed to get him playing a bit as the straining seemed to be directly after his food for half an hour or so only but now he is back to being unsettled for most of the time or having a good day and then three bad days. I am not sure though if this is the constipation or not. We have the same problem with putting Oliver down for a sleep. He sleeps fairly well if we rest him on his front on one of us but if we disturb him too much when we transfer him into the moses basket he wakes up and starts straining. I have actually just had to go and get him out now as he woke himself up straining so I had to sit with him again until he was settled on me and then sneak him into his bouncer. It seems to be easier to transfer him into the bouncer but it concerns me that it's not great for his back. Saying that I am not really sure how good a slanted moses basket is for his back either! Oliver is eating well and gaining weight so we too have the issue that nobody seems concerned. I just re read your post and I too feel that I can't enjoy things but I also feel as if Oliver is missing out and not enjoying things. When he has a good day, it makes me realise what he is missing on the bad days. I do think though that the SMA stay down has really helped as he doesn't seem to be grunting half as much during the night but the days seem to have got a lot worse now instead! He is actually quite good in the bath, he seems to like it and he is nice and quiet in the bath but only if he has had half of his feed before the bath otherwise he is not happy! Let me know if you get any insight from the scan results. Oliver has his 8 week check next week but I know that they will just tell me that he has nearly doubled his birth weight so isn't failing to thrive and must be fine. Good luck, I will keep you posted if things change once I can get rid of the constipation. in the meantime I am off to attempt to move him back into the moses basket! Emma x
Hi there! Gosh i think our little boys may have been seperated at birth they sound exactly the same! Dylan also loves his bath, especially since i got one of those big baby shaped sponges to support him on, he's really quiet and content and tolerates it for ages, infact i'm going to take him swimming in a couple of weeks as he seems to be a water baby. I've commenced the SMA staydown, only the 2nd day but he wa quieter last night until after his 4am feed, he's always been worse early hours for some reason. I'm finding that the formula is not great at dissolving, the teat keeps getting blocked even though i'm mixing into refrigirated water as it suggests, but hey if it helps i'll stick with it! Whilst he's on that i'm laying off the gaviscon and wait to see what happens. Will hopefully hear about scan soon, it may well be that after all this he may not have reflux in which case i wonder if we'll ever find out what's causing his problems! Dylan also sleeps much better on his front. We moved him into his own room last week as i was getting no sleep whatsoever, still not getting much now as i keep getting up to check on him...can't win! He also has his 8 week check and injections on monday (even though he's actually 10 weeks next week, another cock up at the doctors!) I dread to think what kind of night we'll have what with the straining and him possibly being unsettled after the jabs!! One good thing is that he's starting to smile a lot in between his straining episodes, so i'm thinking he must be happy and the fact that most of the time he sleeps through his night time strains must mean he's not in pain...gotta try to stay positive!?! Will keep you informed of any developments! H X
