2 month old always wants to be held

On Aug 6, 7:58 pm, wrote:

Yes, we will try everything including holding, but like at this
moment, he's throwing a fit. We can usually tell from the cry pattern
if anything will help. We've found he generally is very fussy in the
late afternoon/evenings. Mornings he's okay and is, in general very
good. He smiles, coos and seems content. Things start to fall apart in
early afternoon. Holding will help until late afternoon. Then by the
evening sometimes nothing helps.

Live and learn I guess, and as you said it's all about trying to find
what works.

Yep, fortunately/unfortunately you're describing classic colic.
Unfortunately there's nothing you can do but ride it out, and that
process isn't particularly fun. If he's 2 months old you likely have
about a month of this left. The small shred of good news is that you
can accept that this has nothing to do with your parenting skills, or
you needing to find the right response, but is just part of how he's
wired and he will outgrow it.

I'm a general pediatrician and if anyone discovered the cure for colic
I'm sure it would catch on like wildfire. You'll probably get many,
many suggestions of what people have heard will work for colic. By
all means try them if you want to try something. But so far of all
the research that's been done and re-done, the only thing that I'm
aware of consistently working is a medication that virtually no one
prescribes these days. It has a risk of serious side effects, and
wretched though colic is it does no lasting damage. So unless the
parents are teetering on the edge of abusing the baby, the trade off
isn't worth it.

Good luck. It will get better.

Kate, ignorant foot soldier of the medical cartel
and the Bug, 4 years old

On Mon, 06 Aug 2007 17:36:40 -0700, wrote:
Our child is now two months old. Unfortunately he always wants to be
held. It may sound flattering but reality is, it's impossible to hold
him 12-14 hours.

It doesn't sound flattering(why would it?), but you are wrong that
it's impossible to hold a baby all day. Many parents do it, I did it
with my third. Yes even to shower, potty, and cook dinner. Actually I
used a Snugli sometimes but that baby was held all day. Not all babies
are that needy, but it's very normal and natural for a babe to want to
be held. Why would he want to be all alone? He already sleeps alone,
nothing wrong with spending his waking time with his parents!
Marie

I wondered about that too. Usually my wife is with him most of the
day. When he starts crying she would offer the bottle. Sometimes he
would eat maybe a half an oz. Now he tends to "graze", so we've been
trying to "fix" that. We're in California with central A/C that is
kept on most of the time. We've noticed that generally he likes to be
a little warm, so we'll only have the AC come on if it's above 80.

Yes, I've heard that seems to fit the colic pattern also. My wife and
I discussed it last night when he was having his "meltdown" that there
isn't much we can do, but do realize that one day it will end.

Last night, was somewhat typical. He was very fussy, didn't want to be
held, didn't want to be left alone, didn't want to eat....Needless to
say I (dad always gets this part) decided to put him down to cry for
20 minutes. Well he had his fit in which afterwards he calmed down so
I fed him, diapered him, swaddled him tight and put him down for the
night at 9am. He went to sleep and stayed asleep until 5:30am. (At 2am
he only woke up to cry a little then went back to sleep, no usual
feeding. )

Every couple weeks wife drives to grandma's house to get some R&R and
grandma helps out. Or sometimes she comes up. That really helps keep
our sanity.

Thanks for your responses!

On Aug 7, 12:06 am, "Ebony Stares" wrote:
Yes, we will try everything including holding, but like at this
moment, he's throwing a fit. We can usually tell from the cry pattern
if anything will help. We've found he generally is very fussy in the
late afternoon/evenings. Mornings he's okay and is, in general very
good. He smiles, coos and seems content. Things start to fall apart in
early afternoon. Holding will help until late afternoon. Then by the
evening sometimes nothing helps.

Live and learn I guess, and as you said it's all about trying to find
what works.

Hi,

It almost sounds like he is getting over tired, some babies wont sleep well
in your arms and need to be wrapped tightly and put down in a quiet area.
When they get over tired they wont get to sleep easily and will usually take
a fair amount of time to settle.
You can tell when a baby is ready for sleep by looking at their hands, if
they are balled up tightly it means they are tired and need to sleep.
I hope this helps...

Ebony

We've thought that too. I've "tested" him on that when he was fussy. I
would put him to sleep...car seat on top of the dryer (sounds funny
but it works). Most of the time, he'll lightly sleep until the dryer
goes off...roughly 30 minutes which seems like enough time to get him
to enter deep sleep. But most of the time he's back to his usual self.
So it tells me he's not over-tired. Next time I'll check his hands,
haven't heard of that. Thank you!

I hate to tell you this, Smith, but you have an absolutely normal baby.
It's obvious you guys are first time parents, because you are expecting this
baby to do things that 4 week olds, 6 week olds, and 8 week old babies just
don't do. It's sweet, but futile. You have a baby. Babies do these thing.

Newborns don't sleep through the night. They don't like to be left alone.
They like to be held, all the time. They cry for no reason. They are
newborn babies. You can't fix everything. Especially not things that are
normal for a newborn. You just have to survive it. That's why parents have
big first birthday parties -- not to celebrate the child turning 1 year old,
but to celebrate the parents surviving the first year of babyhood.

Having a sense of humor helps. Knowing that every parent goes through the
same things can help. Other than that, all I can tell you is that "yep,
this is normal" and "this too shall pass."

My first daughter wanted to be held all the time too, during those first 3
months. At a certain point I had to teach her to be okay in her bassinet or
crib or bouncy chair, etc, and once she got that, life got much easier. But
the truth of the matter is that it's all a slow process. You put baby in
the bouncy chair and they cry. Try again later. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Eventually baby stays in bouncy chair for 5 minutes without crying. This is
a major milestone! Whooo hoooo! 5 minutes! Then you just keep at it, and
eventually you realize that the 5 minutes has been stretched out to 10, then
15 or 20, then the baby is regularly falling asleep in the swing, and you or
your wife can count on that and schedule in showers, or dishwashing, or
napping, etc. But that stuff happens closer to 4-5 months. To expect an 8
week old baby to be perfectly content being away from it's source of food
and companionship is unrealistic. Remember, they are hardwired to be held.
If they didn't fuss and scream when put down, the tribe could forget about
them and move on to the next hunting ground. But by making themselves
heard, they made sure that they were always taken care of.

--

Jamie
Earth Angels:
Taylor Marlys -- 01/03/03
Addison Grace -- 09/30/04


wrote in message
ps.com...
Our child is now two months old. Unfortunately he always wants to be
held. It may sound flattering but reality is, it's impossible to hold
him 12-14 hours.

(To give you an update on his sleeping, he's now sleeping pretty good
(knocking on wood) in his own crib, in his own room. At first he would
cry and we would let him cry for 15 - 20 minutes. Now he's doing
pretty good and goes to sleep on his own. If he wakes up, he usually
will fall back to sleep. Last night he cried a little but but was off
to sleep until his usual 3am feeding.)

Now to the daytime problem. He aways wants to be held. We're not sure
how to break this habit of his. Most (but not all) of the time if he's
not held or sleeping he'll start a meltdown. We don't know what else
to do. After checking EVERYTHING feeding, diapers etc, on him and
putting him down in his swing for example, etc he'll start crying
after a minute. This morning I decided to just let him cry it out for
15-20 minutes or so. Sometimes it seems to help mellow him out.
However it makes my stomache churn and my wife really doesn't like
hearing him. I'm almost certain our pediatrician will say he's
'collicky' however I doubt that really changes anything.

Does anyone have a solution? My thought is he needs to get used to
being in his swing, jungle gym, etc so that's why like this morning I
just let him have his meltdown. I'm hoping after a few or several
meltdown episodes he'll become more acclimated to not always being
held.

On Aug 7, 7:43 am, Akuvikate wrote:
On Aug 6, 7:58 pm, wrote:



Yes, we will try everything including holding, but like at this
moment, he's throwing a fit. We can usually tell from the cry pattern
if anything will help. We've found he generally is very fussy in the
late afternoon/evenings. Mornings he's okay and is, in general very
good. He smiles, coos and seems content. Things start to fall apart in
early afternoon. Holding will help until late afternoon. Then by the
evening sometimes nothing helps.

Live and learn I guess, and as you said it's all about trying to find
what works.

Yep, fortunately/unfortunately you're describing classic colic.
Unfortunately there's nothing you can do but ride it out, and that
process isn't particularly fun. If he's 2 months old you likely have
about a month of this left. The small shred of good news is that you
can accept that this has nothing to do with your parenting skills, or
you needing to find the right response, but is just part of how he's
wired and he will outgrow it.

I'm a general pediatrician and if anyone discovered the cure for colic
I'm sure it would catch on like wildfire. You'll probably get many,
many suggestions of what people have heard will work for colic. By
all means try them if you want to try something. But so far of all
the research that's been done and re-done, the only thing that I'm
aware of consistently working is a medication that virtually no one
prescribes these days. It has a risk of serious side effects, and
wretched though colic is it does no lasting damage. So unless the
parents are teetering on the edge of abusing the baby, the trade off
isn't worth it.

Good luck. It will get better.

Kate, ignorant foot soldier of the medical cartel
and the Bug, 4 years old

Thanks Doc. So far we've been able to manage through this, hopefully
in the next month or two he'll settle down. Does colic slowly or
quickly "vanish"?

Yes, we've gotten a lot of suggestions from reading the books etc.
Some books tend to contradict one another, however most of them
mention the same techniques. Swaddle, rock, etc etc...

wrote in message
ups.com...
On Aug 6, 5:54 pm, Ericka Kammerer wrote:
wrote:
Does anyone have a solution? My thought is he needs to get used to
being in his swing, jungle gym, etc so that's why like this morning I
just let him have his meltdown. I'm hoping after a few or several
meltdown episodes he'll become more acclimated to not always being
held.

Not necessarily. At this age, he's too young to be
manipulating you. He doesn't have the ability to think in
that way yet. He's not sitting there thinking, "Well, I
want to be held, but Dad doesn't want to hold me, so I'll
just keep upping the ante and screeching louder until he
does what I want whether he likes it or not." At this age,
he's crying because he's not happy with his current situation
and he wants it to change. Most of the time, I don't think
they learn to be comfortable being apart from you by sitting
there and wailing.
At least in my experience, not a lot of 2 month old
babies enjoy spending much time apart from their parents.
Some grow out of it sooner than others. I don't think you
can always hurry that process along, but to the extent that
you can, I suspect it's more likely to happen if the time
he spends apart from you is pleasant rather than unpleasant.
Personally, though, I doubt there's a whole lot you can do
about pushing him to feel comfortable apart from you sooner.
In those sorts of situations, I usually think it's easier
just to give in and try to enjoy the time, rather than
fighting the whole time to have the situation resolve at
about the same time it would have resolved without intervention.
But maybe I'm too pessimistic.
Regardless, it won't be all *that* much longer that
he wants to be held so much. My inclination would just be
to get a sling (or whatever other babywearing device suits
you) and get on with your usual routine while wearing the
baby. In a few more months it'll be driving you crazy
that he wants to be on the ground crawling and getting
into stuff every minute ;-)

Best wishes,
Ericka

Hi Ericka
Yup, she tried the sling too. He's "okay" in sometimes, but othertimes
he isn't. We've tried a couple different types too.

It's not going to be an instantaneous thing, where you find the "right"
sling/carrier and he's happy as a clam in it for hours and hours. Instead,
you put him in the carrier, and he's okay in it for 10 minutes. That's
good. The next time you use it, he might be okay in it a little longer.
It's all about them getting used to the new situation (be it being held, put
down, being put in a swing or bouncy chair, or crib, or being in a
sling/carrier). Some days he may be fine in it for a bit, and othertimes,
not so much. Then you just rotate the options and try something else. It's
what we all go through.


--

Jamie
Earth Angels:
Taylor Marlys -- 01/03/03
Addison Grace -- 09/30/04

wrote in message
ps.com...
I wondered about that too. Usually my wife is with him most of the
day. When he starts crying she would offer the bottle. Sometimes he
would eat maybe a half an oz. Now he tends to "graze", so we've been
trying to "fix" that. We're in California with central A/C that is
kept on most of the time. We've noticed that generally he likes to be
a little warm, so we'll only have the AC come on if it's above 80.

Stop trying to fix everything. He's a newborn. He might be going through a
growth spurt, in which case he needs to eat eat eat eat all day long, and
then for a few days will sleep, sleep, sleep all day long!
--

Jamie
Earth Angels:
Taylor Marlys -- 01/03/03
Addison Grace -- 09/30/04

On Aug 7, 9:34?am, wrote:
I wondered about that too. Usually my wife is with him most of the
day. When he starts crying she would offer the bottle. Sometimes he
would eat maybe a half an oz. Now he tends to "graze", so we've been
trying to "fix" that. We're in California with central A/C that is
kept on most of the time. We've noticed that generally he likes to be
a little warm, so we'll only have the AC come on if it's above 80.

It does sound like normal young-baby fussiness (possibly colic) that
nothing will fix except tincture of time, but you might want to rule
out cow's milk allergy (or soy, if he's on soy formula). In the few
cases where an allergy is to blame, I'm told the difference can be
like night and day.

--Helen

On Aug 7, 10:00 am, "Jamie Clark" wrote:
wrote in message

ps.com...I wondered about that too. Usually my wife is with him most of the
day. When he starts crying she would offer the bottle. Sometimes he
would eat maybe a half an oz. Now he tends to "graze", so we've been
trying to "fix" that. We're in California with central A/C that is
kept on most of the time. We've noticed that generally he likes to be
a little warm, so we'll only have the AC come on if it's above 80.

Stop trying to fix everything. He's a newborn. He might be going through a
growth spurt, in which case he needs to eat eat eat eat all day long, and
then for a few days will sleep, sleep, sleep all day long!
--

Jamie
Earth Angels:
Taylor Marlys -- 01/03/03
Addison Grace -- 09/30/04

The baby articles we got from the hospital advises not to let your
baby graze.
This is why new parents like me are hopeless. We get conflicting
opinions.