u/squeaky-pie

I've had a few really good experiences getting out quickly from this lot, so it was a no-brainer when we went to a concert last week. Well we ended up waiting 1.5 hours to get out this time. I am not sure what happened.

I think part of the reason is that we arrived later than usual, so we were in the back portion of the lot rather than the front.

In comparison, I've never been able to get out of the normal lots (even VIP).

Even with our latest experience, I'd still recommend this lot to everyone.

Talk therapy and Buspar.

On the kid front - I will say that for me, a side effect of having kids has actually made it easier to deal with outside anxieties. I take joy in the little things that I would have otherwise overlooked. Their joy is infectious. Also helps that they keep me very busy. However kids also generate a lot of new anxieties (money, am I doing this right, etc), so really a very personal decision and I understand why some people choose not to do it or hold off.

We saw improvement within a couple days - enough where we knew cow protein was probably the issue. However there was still discomfort and a lot of mucus in his stools and I was impatient. We were at our wits end with lack of sleep (hated being on his back, severe gas pains etc) so we switched from breast milk to Nutramigen after 2 weeks. Within 24 hours of being on Nutramigen, he was a new baby and we are all finally sleeping.

My son started out like this although maybe not to this extreme. The magic merlin suit was the only thing that got him to nap. Like yours, my son only really liked napping in the car (something about the carseat) or on me. Once I read that the maker of the Merlin created it because her LO would only sleep in their carseat, I knew I had to try it. You can get them cheap on Facebook marketplace. We're at 4mo now and still not napping for long but he is at least independent and consistent.

Other things that helped although you are probably already doing - white noise and a Shusher. I only put him down when he's been asleep in my arms for 10 minutes.

We were struggling with this as well and if you skip to the bottom it might save you some time:

My son was struggling to pass gas/poop since the beginning. I kept waiting for it to get better, thinking his digestion just needed to mature. We put him on Pepcid around 7 weeks, which didn't seem to do a lot but I wanted to rule out reflux as an issue. I reached my breaking point around 10 or 11 weeks when he started waking up 6x a night and was in visible pain for long periods of time.

I was breastfeeding and I decided to cut dairy. We started to see immediate improvement but it wasn't enough. I ended up moving him to Nutramigen formula. Within 36 hours of being 100% on the formula, he was a new baby. We went from waking up 6x a night to sleeping for 6 straight hours and consistently only waking 1-3x a night. He was happy, and he wasn't struggling to pass gas or poop.

After all this, I was told by a DR (not our pedi, but one at the same practice) that NASPGHAN's guidelines changed a couple years ago. They suggest a trial of a hypoallergenic formula or a maternal cow's milk-free diet for 2 to 4 weeks when an infant is suspected of having reflux. This approach is used because the symptoms of reflux and cow's milk protein allergy/intolerance can be indistinguishable. Had I known this, we would have done it several weeks earlier and saved us all a lot of pain.

My daughter went through a period where she only wanted her dad. She would go so far as to tell me to "go away" (she just turned two at the time). Prior to that, we were besties. I remember crying in my room one night after one particularly bad episode. It was very hard, but as the rest of the comments have said - it's a phase. They don't mean it, it's not about you. You have to try your best not to take it personally or hold it against them. I found that reading about how this was developmentally normal/expected helped to ground me.

Now the pendulum has swung the other way and dad is not even allowed to get her out of her car seat.