Tuesday, August 28, 2012

The witching hour(s)

I have a confession... There is a portion of the night, almost every night that I cry. Its usually around the second straight hour of Audrina sobbing, Adam pacing the floor cursing the doctors, and me trying everything under the sun to figure out why shes upset. Every night we do this ritual.

Audrina sleeps peacefully til about 3 am, at which point she begins shrieking and flailing her arms and legs... Then she will arch her back, shake her head back and forth and cry and cry and cry.

Weve swaddled, unswaddled, shes too hot, too cool, not enough blanket weight, rocked her, bounced her, lights on, lights off, maybe its her tube, maybe its gas, gas drops, tylenol, gripe water, and dont get me started on the pacifier.

She thrusts her tongue all over the place makig it impossible to keep the paci in. Except she desperately wants it.... So thats a whole nother game. We might get her to take it and shes almost asleep, pushes it out and screams for another hour.

Nothing we do makes any difference to her, holding her, positioning her, burping... Nothing. This happens at least once a day during the day too - and the only thing we can do to stop it is to let her watch tv. She loves tv. Flame away, im a horrible mom.... Ive got a 6 month old who is obsessed with watching yo gabba gabba. I definitely didnt set out to have a baby watching tv all the time. Were only making it worse by using it as a tool to calm her down but is literally the only thing that works and sometimes we all just need a break.

Tonight it got so bad we set yo gabba gabba up on the laptop next to her bed at 430 because she couldnt stop screaming. She cried from 330- 6 today and thats happening 4-5 nights a week. Were exhausted, shes unhappy, somethings gotta give.

So she cries. And so do I. Im mommy and supposed to make it better and I cant. This has been going on for months. Were zombies, barely able to function most days.

Ive discussed it with her doctors who tell me some baby are just fussy and to just keep waiting on her to outgrow i. I dont think thats whats happening here, shes not even calmed by being held. Eventually she just wears herself out :( Shes probably spending 3-5 hours a day screaming and crying at 6 months old.... But no one will do anything about it so I guess we will just keeping holding on. I just want to enjoy her and get those precious few hours of rest waiting for me at the end of every long day. Most of all, I dont want her to be suffering and unhappy.

6 comments:

  1. I came across your blog from the Nov birth board a while back and I just can't even imagine what you are going through. It breaks my heart to hear that Audrina screams for such long periods of time every day. I would cry with my son when he cried for longer than 5 minutes, I can't imagine hours of screaming. I just can't imagine. You are one strong woman! I don't know how you do it. I pray that there will be some doctor that will come along and be able to figure out exactly what it is that is causing all of these issues. There has to be someone out there who knows something.

    P.S. I absolutely love the photo bomb of your girls. They all are adorable and so precious.

    Prayers for you and your family!

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  2. You guys are doing great, and I love to see how you still are able to praise God. your family will be in my prayers, especially for the pain for the two girls to be gone.

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  3. It is hard to say what is causing all the screaming, given all of her medical issues and being premature. But I can empathize. My full-term, healthy Nov. 2010 baby was the same way. Our doctors said that the antidepressant that I was on caused her to be hyper-sensitive. Since, as far as my google searches have found, there have been no official studies on the effects of antidepressants on babies while in the womb, I find it hard to believe. However, now at 21 months old, she has finally outgrown it. So, I feel confident in telling you that there is light at the end of the tunnel. It might be a very long tunnel...but it's there. :-)

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  4. My full term baby with severe reflux did the same thing. It took a long time to get a good reflux medicine combination but at 1 year we did. She did not sleep for more then 20 min at a time until she was 6 months ans after that she woke up anywhere from 4 to 10 times at night. It was awful. The reflux meds were upped quite a bit around 8 months and she started sleeping. She did scream almost 24/7 until she was 6 months old. Could her reflux meds not be doing the job. I did find out that instead of giving them in one dose, they should be given at least 2 times. Zantac was awful for her, caused terrible stomach cramps. Omeprazole is what we settled on and at 21 months she still needs it.

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  5. This sounds a lot like reflux to me too. My son has severe reflux and still suffers from about 2-5am. The body goes through a major acid dump around 2AM (leftover biology from the days when food wasn't as safe as it is today) and even if the child is medicated, it's a tricky time to manage. We use generic cherry supreme mylanta, the kind without aluminum, for immediate relief. Maybe it's worth a try one night?

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  6. It takes a lot of courage to share so intimately what you are going through. You never cease to amaze me. You are such a strong person and wonderful mother and wife. God will carry you through this. We continue to pray for Addison and Audrina as well as your entire family. Hugs.

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