This used to be once a night. Then twice, then 3 times ... but then maybe around when Colson was 14 months old, I noticed that even after I would pick him up he would still be squirming around and he seemed uncomfortable. Sometimes I would walk in and he would be rolling around in his crib arching his back and stiffening his legs as if in pain :(
We took him to the doctor who ruled out ear or respiratory infection. He asked if Colson was exhibiting any discomfort during the day (no) or if he had any vomiting, or blood in his stool - also both no. I thought it was acid reflux, but the Dr. said that it wouldn't just act up at night. Nevertheless, we put Cols on Zantac for about 10 days. With no improvement, I took him off the medicine.
Next, the Dr. suggested that maybe a certain type of food was causing the abdominal discomfort and chronic constipation (and he was also very gassy at times). So then we started an elimination diet to see if it would help. First thing to go was milk and dairy, then soy, then gluten ... then we added soy back in so he could at least have soymilk. Without any improvement, it then occured to me that we should try to eliminate rice because with all the other food that we were cutting out, rice was a huge part of his diet. Within days his constipation went away - he began going twice a day regularly. He had never been this regular his whole life! We are going through diapers so quickly now ... he used to only poo maybe once every 3 or four days! Obviously now looking back this was a huge part of the problem ... he was so backed up poor guy.
Needless to say all this elimination dieting took a lot of work and monitoring. We were keeping (and still keeping) a detailed food and sleep diary. At our lowest moment, Cols was waking literally every hour from the time he went to bed until the time he was up for the day -- so for a period of almost a week he never got longer than a one hour stretch of sleep. At this point I -- we -- were beyond exhausted, but felt even worse for our little boy who could not get a good night sleep :(
After we cut out the rice, things began to slowly improve. It has only been this week that things have been almost back to normal. We re-introduced gluten (wheat) foods and he seems to be okay. I am also slowly re-introducing dairy and milk. He's only waking once or twice a night, but is able to go back to sleep on his own in about five minutes or less. It's been a long 3 months, but we are so glad that he is getting some quality sleep again ...
