The price of gas is apparently my sleep. And my sanity.
If Brendan were waking up at night because he was hungry, I wouldn't be nearly as upset and stressed as I am. But he's gone from waking every four-five hours at night to waking every one-two hours, and it's not hunger, it's definitely pain. He jolts awake and cries very angrily. If I try to "pump" his legs to get him to toot, he shrieks. I rub his tummy, pump his legs, and sometimes he'll toot, sometimes he won't. This all started between three and four months of age, and I thought it started around the same time as I started taking More Milk Plus capsules to boost my production (I've always struggled to keep up with him). So I stopped taking them, but it didn't stop the gas. I tried giving him gripe water, but that didn't help (actually it seemed to make it worse, but I can't say for sure). I've tried giving him Mylicon drops after each feeding, but it doesn't help either. Brendan's been getting some cereal since he turned four months, but we've varied the type of cereal (rice and oatmeal), the amount, what it's mixed with, and when he gets it during the day (and even if he gets it at all--there've been a couple days this past week when he hasn't had any cereal at all), and that hasn't affected the gas either. Yesterday he had formula during the day (we were traveling), and before I breastfed him in the evening I pumped some and dumped off the thinner foremilk, and he was just as bad last night as any other night. I tried laying off dairy products all weekend, thinking maybe something was passing through my milk to him, but it didn't seem to matter either. I just don't know what to do. He doesn't show any other symptoms to milk allergy, lactose intolerance, or an foremilk imbalance--no diarrhea, no green frothy poo, no vomiting, no eczema, not spitting up any more than usual...I just don't understand what has changed. He's sleeping worse now than he did when we came home from the hospital (and that's when he was practically starving to death because I wasn't producing any milk at all).
As terrible as it is for me to hear his crying, I'm incredibly selfish, because I'd do just about anything to get some $%#&@$& sleep. I've never been able to nap during the day, not even when I was little. If I do manage to sleep during the day, I wake up disoriented, achy, and basically feeling worse than I did before I took the nap. I'm not expecting a full night's sleep (although I wouldn't turn it down), but I'd love to get back to when Brendan when sleeping from 10-3, nursing for an hour, and then sleeping until 10 am. I'm also concerned because I am hoping to get a long-term sub job that starts mid-April, and if I get it I'm really going to need more sleep than I'm getting...
I just have this overwhelming feeling that I'm not doing it right. Between friends, former coworkers, and former students, I know about 15 people who had babies right around the same time I did, and it seems like everyone else "gets it" but me. When people tell me that their babies slept through the night at 3 weeks old (formula or breast), it just seems like proof that I'm doing something wrong. Everyone keeps saying "all babies are different", but it sure feels like we're the odd ones out. I mean, all babies may be different, but there has to be some reason some babies sleep through the night early and some don't. People have been having babies for thousands and thousands of years without drama, so why are we at five months with no schedule yet? Some days he naps for three hours at a time, some days I'm lucky to get him to nap for fifteen minutes. Some nights he'll drop off to sleep between 9-10, as soon as I nurse him, other nights he's still wide awake and full of it at 11. And regardless of when he goes down, some nights he's awake again in 45 minutes, and some nights he stays asleep for a couple hours. Some mornings he'll go back to sleep until 9 or 10, and some mornings he's up at 6:45 with no nap in sight. It sure makes me feel like there's some trick everyone else knows but me.
With the breast feeding vs. formula, I've started to feel like there's a mom on each shoulder, instead of an angel and a devil, whispering in my ears. On the breast feeding side, I know it's the natural option--"breast is best" and all that--and the least expensive, should boost his immune system, prevent some allergies, strengthen the bond between the two of us, help me lose weight (which totally ISN'T happening), etc., etc. Plus, I fought so hard to breast feed in the first place (since my milk came in so late, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to breast feed at all). But the formula side is accumulating some heavy artillery. It's more convenient--I wouldn't have to worry about pumping and storage (if I get this sub job, I'll only have two times during the day that I can pump--I can't guarantee they won't be back-to-back because I don't know what the schedule of the classes is--I've got to figure out where I can store the milk until the end of the day, and i don't know if I'll be able to pump the amount that Brendan will consume during the day). I wouldn't have to waste any milk, since I could mix the formula as needed and not have extra. I could give him a formula that would help with the gas and whatever might be causing it. And it might get me a full night's sleep sooner rather than later. It's just really hard.
I'm sorry to just kind of go off, but I really feel like I'm just a meltdown away from thrusting him into the arms of the first person I see and running off screaming into the woods somewhere.
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