lots of crying plus extra feed in the night: growth spurt?

DD and I had an awful night (by her standards: I know I don't, overall, have anything much to complain about).

In the afternoon she slept for a really long time - about 3 hours. This is unusual. She has also been very "spewy" the last couple of days, not that this is particularly unusual. But I did wonder whether she had a tummyache of some sort.

After going down to bed just fine initially (around 8.30pm), from about 10pm when I got to bed she couldn't sleep for hours, kept tossing about, losing the dummy, tossing more, etc. I just kept putting the dummy back in and hoping that this time she'd settle.

Then, around 3am she started crying, and she cried on and off for a couple of hours. I have no idea what the problem was :( She was really distressed, and this is entirely unklike her - she's a placid, happy baby. It was awful :(

I fed her at 3 and at 5 and at 7.30. Normal feeds would have been at 4am and 8am (going on recent weeks). The 5am feed didn't actually seem to help much - she stopped crying for a little while, then started again. I burped her well and got one big one, but then she started crying again. Eventually she stopped the crying and went back to just tossing and turning again, before falling asleep briefly.

Now, because she rarely cries, and almost never cries with hunger (I feed her before she gets to crying, almost every time) I don't know the difference between her hungry cry and her other cries. So I don't know if hunger was the problem, in which case it's a growth spurt, or whether there was some other problem, maybe even something I should take her to the doctor for. She seems OK this morning (doesn't seem nearly as tired as I am!).

She's 12 weeks old, so presumably due for a growth spurt. I haven't noticed her having a growth spurt before. Maybe this was it.

Any suggestions? If she does it again today or tonight I'd love to be able to sort out the problem so she doesn't have to cry for so long. I really felt awful about it. The both of us getting more sleep tonight would help a whole lot, too...

sounds like it to me. They have a lot of growth spurts, so get used to it lol It's so hard when it's happening but soon it will pass :)

Are you breastfeeding? Sometimes when they feed/cry like that they are trying to build up your supply in preparation for a growth spurt. 12 weeks is a big milestone. Well done!

12 weeks is a classic "growth spurt" time. Although they are now called fussy periods, as we know that they don't actually do any extra growing at these times :doh: But this is perfectly normal and it will pass - the best thing you can do is to continue to feed her on demand. I think you are doing so well hun.

It turns out that she has a cold, so my guess is that on Tuesday night she had a sore throat, and that was making her so miserable. She was worse on Wednesday night but, I think, slightly better last night. The doctor checked her out and said that it didn't seem to be anything scary. I reckon it was one of the toddlers we spent the weekend with that gave her something - they are both in daycare so get a lot of bugs (of course we, and their parents, didn't know they were crook, or else we wouldn't have been with them on the weekend).

Hopefully she'll be back to her normal sunny self in the morning!