Hello My wife and I have just added a beautiful little boy to the neighbourhood, but unfortunately as beautiful as we may think he is and as happy as we are to have him, he seems to be having some serious trouble just "existing" in the world at the moment. The main issue is that he has begun to unconsolably scream and cry for hours at a time throughout the day and night. If he is not eating or sleeping (which he almost never does) he is crying. He is only three weeks old and I appreciate that everything around him, and all the sensations both internally and externally are probably pretty intense at this stage, however three weeks of intense sleep deprivation has broken us both down and we are finding our coping abilities are beginning to crumble.
I suppose our question is "Is this normal?" I know all babies are different and all babies cry or are fussy, don't sleep etc etc. But when does screaming and crying become something to be concerned about? We tried very hard to study up and become as informed as we possibly could regarding what was to come, developmental stages, fourth trimester, calming techniques (Dr. Karp, slings) etc, but nothing has prepared us for the intensity of our little man's constant upset. It is definitely affecting our ability to bond with him as we would like to because we rarely have the opportunity to see a calm contented baby.
We are tired of the well intentioned "welcome to parenthood" comments from friends and the like and would love to at least hear that we are not the only people that have gone through this. Everyone keeps saying "it will all get better, I promise", but when? The magic number that keeps coming up is three months, does that mean we have to endure three months of guantanamo levels of sleep deprivation before it gets better? I literally broke down in tears at the thought of not being able to bond with this amazing little boy who we wanted so badly because of this issue.
He was given a full clean bill of health and is putting on weight, so as far as anyone can tell he is as healthy as can be. Of course there are the million and one worse case scenarios that go through our heads that he has some horrible disease, is neuro A-typical or worst of all we have done something to cause all of this chaos for this little guy. My gut feeling is that he's only three weeks old and that even though it's pretty intense at the moment, what we're dealing with is hard but normal and it will indeed get better.
We would really appreciate hearing any of your similar experiences and or solutions you may have found along the way. I'm not sure there is an answer to our questions, Nevertheless a little help and support can go a long way.
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Behaviour/development
3 Wk old: If he's not eating or sleeping he's crying. We're losing the plot quickly!!
58 replies
Elguapo · 02/09/2014 19:59
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