Nine weeks - number of feeds? ...and painful wind

[comet3]

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..

[madmouse]

If he is growing well and filling his nappies with lots of wees and regular poos then trust him and follow his appetite. I really do not think there is a need to wake him up to feed, enjoy

the bottle can be the problem, do you wind him often also during feeding?

if he just wants to suck try a dummy? It can be done with bf, my son never got confused and it sounds like you are well established.

If you let him sleep during the night you may find he ups his feeds a bit during the day to about every 3 hours.

try different winding techniques:
sit him in front of you and gently twist his upper body at the waist a little bit

put him on your shoulder and let his whole body hang down

also try tiger in the tree: put him tummy down over your lower arm, head in your hand. it puts gentle pressure on his tummy

sounds like he doing great, nothing to worry about.

[Ebb]

My son developed bad wind at about this age and I found that sucking on a dummy seemed to soothe him. I was a bit anti dummies but it was the only thing that worked. ( I only give it to him when he has wind and take it out when he calms down and I don't let him sleep with it as couldn't be bothered with doing the whole put it back in 100 x a night! ) The wind has really improved now at 20 wks.

As for feeds I feed on demand which tends to be 3 hourly ish during the day. I would be inclined not to wake your ds at night if he's sleeping. If he's feeding enough during the day and gaining weight then there's no reason he can't sleep for a longer stretch. For what it's worth the last baby I looked after slept 7 - 7 at 8wks ( never seemed interested in milk and was ff ) and my Ds only started going 6 hours at a time at 12wks. He now goes 10.30pm to 7.30/8am but takes ages to settle between 7pm and 9pm as tends to cluster feed.

[morethanasong]

I don't know about the wind, but it's normal for a baby of this age to go a loooong time between poos, so don't worry about that

[comet3]

ooh, great tip about the twisting-burping thing, thanks! will add it to the roster of methods (definitely easier than walking up and down stairs endlessly...)

and thanks all for lifting my guilt about letting night time feeds dwindle if he wants...will do so from now on and keep a strong eye on his hunger levels during the day.

two more v stupid qs..

if giving gripe water, what's the best method of feeding it to them? tried a dropper, but not that much use (and seems difficult to keep the dropper sterile if it touches their mouth, no?)

sorry - this one is totally idiotic, but when told to rub their tummy clockwise, does that mean with them facing you or facing away? and does it really matter?

sorry, a bit sleep deprived today so brain not functoning..

[mumeroo]

hi comet3, have exactly the same with my DS who is 10 weeks. We use one of those plastic plunger (are they called syringes?) things that the doctor gave us that sucks up the gripe water and then you put it into babies mouth. He doesn't like the process but it's easier than a spoon or dropper

[thequietone]

I recommend fennel tea. Never heard of this in the UK, but here in Germany EVERYONE does it. DS2 suffered from terrible, painful wind for his first 8 weeks. When he sipped from a bottle of fennel tea (one teabag steeped for a few minutes, and obviously NOT hot), you could actually feel the bubbles burst in his stomach and his little body relaxed. Nothing else worked for me, and as it was a natural product, amazing. I wish knew about it the first time round (sigh)