Every evening Baby makes it hard for us to settle her for her evening sleeps. Often it's because she's all agitated - with quick, shallow breathing and a really anxious look on her face - for some unknown reason.
So-called "relaxation baths" don't seem to help; she'll get agitated as soon as she's out of the water and into the relatively cold air, and sometimes she acts all nervous-like when she's still in the water.
We figured Baby's un-relaxed state was due to trapped wind, because she sure does regurgitate a lot; after a good puke-up she's usually a whole lot calmer. I read about some substance called Gripe Water, which is supposed to be good for wind, so I bought some at the supermarket to try.
I don't know exactly how Gripe Water is supposed to work, since the only instructions that come with the bottle are to do with dosage, but this is how it works for us - squirt up to 3 mls of the stuff into Baby's mouth and close her mouth to prevent it from being spit out. In about two seconds, Baby pukes out what appears to be a stomach-full of pre-digested mum's milk plus saliva. Baby feels much better, and the chances of getting her to sleep before midnight increase markedly.
Has anyone else out there used Gripe Water, or have an effective remedy for infant nervous tension?
6 comments:
I think we used something called Infacol (?) from the pharmacy. I don't think Z. found baths relaxing as a baby. She really didn't like having her clothes changed or taken off at all. When she was in that early evening agitated phase I think it used to help to lie her face down across my lap while she sucked something- her hand, my hand, or a dummy, and gradually she used to settle down. I think she found it reassuring or maybe the warmth on her tummy helped.
There is also what we used to call the flying baby position where the baby lies along the length of your forearm while you rub their back which the midwife showed me. I think it again has a soothing, comforting effect on the babies tummy. It's certainly very effective for bringing up wind (and good to have a spill cloth handy).
Puke-ups. Gripe water. Yikes! Can babies eat that Beano stuff? Doesn't that get rid of gas?
mtnw: it's good to know our baby isn't weird for not liking baths. The last time I tried the flying baby thing, I was sitting in bed - I ended up having to change the sheets, the duvet cover, my t-shirt, Baby's jumpsuit...
glomgold: actually, we found that putting her in her vibrating baby chair brings up burps reasonably well. It just doesn't stop her from fussing.
OK, I may be hopelessly put of touch seeing as my last baby is now 8 but Gripe Water isnt nealry as good as it used to be for settling babies since the powers that be took the alcohol out of it!
Have you tried having a bath with baby before bedtime? Babies usually love the skin contact and it could be your of the Boy who gets to bathe baby. Or even, a shower, my babies used to love coming in the shower with me, husband would stand outside the shower, towel ready and get baby dressed while I had a luxurious 10 minute shower all to myself!
Also, cuddles help..... This may not be much help as I'm sure if you're like me, you can't stop cuddling her. Honestly though, my babies puked up everything I fed them but still gained loads of weight. All I had to do was hold them upright, their head on my shoulder and walk around a bit until hey'd puked up their lot and fallen asleep. Also, bathing before bedtime feed helps relax them.
This is what worked for me, maybe you can use something!
Here is some hopeless advice, because I can't remember the name of the product. Some pharmacy in Ngaion makes up its own gripe water called Somethingorothers Wind Drops. It is meant to be magic. If I speak to my friend I'll find out.
And something about sleep (and you can tell me to f off if you've tried it or whatever), but when we found it a challenge to get my son to sleep when he was little, we changed when we tried to do it. For the first 6 weeks or so we'd bath him at about 9pm. He was hopeless to get to sleep, so we decided to try at 6pm. He was usually was asleep by 7, and we had our evenings back.
martha: I did wonder about trying for an earlier bed time. But we usually try to get her to nap in the evenings (in her hammock) anyway, and usually she won't do that. So, if she won't nap in the hammock she probably isn't going to sleep in the cot.
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