My son is nine weeks tomorrow (! seems amazing to me) and was born big at nearly 10lbs. He is breastfed and very occasionally now has EBM.Apart from a problem in the first few days when my milk didn't come in, he has been gaining weight happily - i essentially have him on a loosish regime of roughly every 4 hrs, which is basically when he demands it (sometimes it's more like 3..and I try not to let him go beyond 4). i sometimes feel guilty that it isn't more often, but he really doesn't seem to like more frequent feeding (it has given him sore tummies in the past). he has up till now been extremely happy, latches on well, sucks energetically, fills nappies like crazy etc. Essentially a dream baby...
My first problem is that he has suddenly started to get what seems to be really painful trapped wind. No amount of winding him at the end of meals seems to help. This coincides with his pattern of pooing changing - i gather this is natural at this age, but he has now gone a day and a half without pooing (urine is as normal and the poo when it arrives is too). I presume this is related to the wind...does anyone have a good method for dealing with it? Because of this, I have stopped giving him any EBM from a bottle until he feels better - do you think I should reinstate them(he feeds very quickly from a bottle and I don't know whether that is good or bad from this point of view).
I also wonder whether I am spacing his meals right - he is showing signs of not wanting his night feeds (often I have to wake him up for them)- last night I was mortified with guilt because I slept through my alarm and he went for over 6 hrs without feeding - and even then I had to wake him. This seems a very long time to me - but I have also noticed that he is possetting up more htan he used to and so am wondering if in fact I am overfeeding him and this is contributing to his wind problems...He is a very 'sucky' baby when not happy, and it can be easy to interpret tummyache as hunger and thus feed him and add to the problem..over the last few days I have been feeding him a bit more and think this may not be helping matters..
so, I guess my questions are:
a) any brilliant ideas on the trapped wind?
b) for a big baby of his age, what would you say is a reasonable no of daily feeds? I don't want to reduce the number necessarily, but would it be safe to allow him to sleep longer in the night, and if so for how long?
sorry for length - am paranoid first mother and it's horrible to see his little face in pain...any help gratefully received..
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Infant feeding
Nine weeks - number of feeds? ...and painful wind
6 replies
comet3 · 03/10/2008 15:31
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