Help!! My baby has become possessed by Ms. FussBus

[owlgirl]

I am not sure what is going on, or when it started but my baby is crying all the time now! Not so much at night, as she use to, but now during the day. She fights sleep, only will nap for 30 minutes. Oh, she is 5 weeks, EBF, we are practicing APing, cosleeping, etc. She will fall asleep in Moby or Ergo but it takes effort. Not sure if it is a allergy to dairy or something I am eating? I have been told it is too early for allergies to manifest but I not convinced. Anyone have ANY stories or advice? She wasn't always like this which worries me. I don't think it is a sick or pain thing because she will calm down at times.....hmmmm

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[CrunchyChristianMama]

My first guess would be that she is overtired.  How long does she stay awake between naps?  Often babies at that age can only stay awake for around an hour at a time before they need to be sleeping again. 

[owlgirl]

How long does she stay awake between naps? Hours...3-6...fights sleep. Seems the Ergo or Moby work but when we try to take her out she wakes up and screams all over again. My poor baby!! So I need to really work on helping her sleep more often. Yikes!! Thanks!! I can't believe how much she is NOT sleeping.

[CrunchyChristianMama]

If she's staying awake that long I would definitely say it's being overtired.  Around that age I've found my babies get less able to sleep in distracting environments.  And, once they are fussy, they are usually overtired.  Once she's been awake for 45-60 min. I would recommend calming her environment down, doing the same sort of wind down routine, and helping her get to sleep.  For my first DD that meant rocking and reading a book in a darkened room.  For my second DD, that meant laying her down swaddled in her bed because rocking was too distracting for her and she fell asleep better on her own.  It's different for every baby.  Good luck!

[Knitting Mama]

Check out The Happiest Baby on the Block, and the 5 S's within. Worked like magic for us! And I agree with previous posters too-- figure out your routine (our was diaper, song, swaddle, nurse), and start it when she's been up for 30-60 minutes, even if she's not necessarily acting super tired yet. Sometimes preempting it works best!

[P.J.]

I agree with everything already said. A baby of that age should be needing to sleep every 1-3 hours...6 hours between naps is waaaay too long!

Our son was colicky, which it doesn't sound like your baby is, but perhaps she has some of the same issues, which for DS was overstimulation. So when he started screaming we would make the room dark and quiet and rock in the glider with him. We also made sure to keep the environment generally peaceful and calm and quiet. That included not getting too much in his face and trying to play with or entertain him, but just trying to be peaceful and shanti. We could not go out with him (besides walks) until he was about 4 months old...he would just get super fussy every time we tried to go anywhere.

So I would recommend trying to keep everything very calm and make sure to find a nap routine and stick to it, every 1-3 hours depending on her signals. And yeah Happiest Baby stuff also works great....definitely try swaddling if you haven't already.

GL!

[Knitting Mama]

1-3 hours at 5 weeks old??? I can't imagine a 5 week old staying awake longer than an hour, to be honest. They need a lot of sleep, probably way more than you think, OP. I mentioned this in my other post, but I'll go into greater detail here: signs of being tired often means it's too late and your baby is already overly tired (it's like dehydration-- once you feel you're thirsty, it's too late and you're already dehydrated). I'm not generally a scheduler with my daughter, who is now 9 months, but when she was tiny, I found that some casual scheduling worked really well for us. At 5 weeks old, I would start getting her ready to nap again after 30 minutes of awake time. She would either go right down, or nurse for 15-20 minutes and go down then. I don't think she was ever awake for more than 45 minutes that early on. Heck, even at 6 months she was still a nap after 2 hours kind of girl, and it took until then to work her up to being awake for 2 hours.

[mra]

I agree with everyone. Julia is four weeks old and we are having a similar situation. She seems to be fighting sleep as well and then gets very fussy. Up to a few days ago she slept much more. Now I am doing what was mentioned, calming her down to get her to nap before she gets fussy. I got a book called Itsy Bitsy Yoga and it has some great relaxing things you can do to set up calming routines. Check it out on Amazon, it has great reviews.