My 8 month old, when she is usually tired and drinking a bottle, will scratch herself or pull on her clothes. She leaves some pretty good marks on herself. She will also flail and squirm around almost like she is really fighting falling asleep. I just kind of hold her arms down gently while she's eating. Any moms have this issue as well?
You guys are sweethearts. I give her a blanket now and she rubs it between her fingers. No food allergies, just squirminess which I think is worse when she's overly tired!
It is hard to cut them as they are wiggling all over and trying to get away from you. Try filing them
Try giving her a piece of silk or satin with your smell on it. I used and old cami nightgown. When she starts up put the silky between her little fingers and see if she will rub on that instead. I did that with my little girl when she was doing the same thing and eventually she would rub that between her fingers and pull and tug on that instead of her skin or mine.
Hope this helps.
Thanks,
A.
S. S,
It may be just a habit for her, especially since she does it only during feeding time. However, just to take precaution, does she scratch the same area of her body? How does that area look and feel? You may want to make sure she does not have either a mild case eczema, food allergies (to milk or otherwise) or something else along those lines. It could even be her clothes is making her scratch (detergent). Again, may just be a habit she associates doing with feeding time but could not hurt to check some other possibilities.
Good Luck!
Cut her nails. babies need their nails cut every few weeks.cause they grow fast. if you have cut her nails try putting socks on her hands, but she might not tollerate it.
They do make infant nail clippers. Their nails grow so fast you just need to trim them while she is sleep. You can also try the mittens. Hope this helps. My daughter is 7 1/2 now but I remember her nails grew awfully fast also and yes she did scratch herself alot. So I was constantly trimming her nails. :) Way to go Dad for staying home. Child care is so expensive you are blessed that at least one of you can stay home and survive the expense of it all.
I second the filing suggestion - that always worked better for me than clipping them. Also, (and this is hard to explain) I always held my children crossways across my body so that one arm was kind of immmobilized and then I would hold their free hand or give them something to hold onto if they were old enough to hold the bottle. Good luck...this is such a wonderful age and it is so fleeting. My youngest is almost three and it seems like yesterday that she was your babies age. Enjoy it!
I feel your pain! My son does this same thing, we have started to put him to bed and let him cry it out sometimes and he is getting use to going to sleep on his own. He pulls on his face and even claws at it. He does a lot better when I just let him go to sleep on his own rather then try to hold him.
S.,
try bathing your baby in Aveno Oatmeal bath. Perhaps her skin is a little on the dry side and perhaps a lotion for sensative skin... also, you might want to make sure you keep her nails trimed fairly short.
I use to put socks on my little ones' hands to keep her from scratching. Is it possible she has some sort of allergy to something in her formula?
My youngest child did that when breast feeding and I kept his nails cut best I could and I would put a soft baby blanket in his hand and would rub his face with it, he then would have to hold a blanket and would do the same while breast feeding as he got older. Funny he's 5 now and still likes his little blanket beside his pillow when he goes to sleep...it helped at least in our case he stopped scratching his little face...hope you get to try it and it helps....mittens never worked very well for us.
Have you tried any lotions? My daughter did the same thing and turns out she has a lot of food allergies. Even though I was breastfeeding the food stuff went through my milk and made her itch because of the ezcema she was getting from the allergie. She cant have cow milk, soy, egg and peanuts. If it gets worse or just wont go away with lotion I would take her to the doc.
