6mo ebf baby with bad gas- should I give up dairy?

[purpleaura]

Hi all, my lo wakes up in discomfort several times every night with bad gas. He cries and farts until he sleeps again, then an hour later we have another session. It had been recommended to me that I try giving up dairy as he may be sensitive to it. If I think it will help, I'll do it but it feels like such a big undertaking and means saying bye bye to all my fave foods... I know that's really shallow of me, but when I get such little sleep my morning cappuccino and mid-afternoon chocolate get me through the day! So... should I do it? I'm told it takes at least 2 weeks to find out if it has any impact. Does anyone have any experience they could share? Many thanks x

[TheScience]

Is there anything else that makes you think it might be dairy?

[purpleaura]

Just that I eat a fair bit of dairy I suppose and he's SO gassy, I suppose I'm looking to find something to help him. Clutching at straws I guess. We do belly massage every day which often releases some farts but it never makes any difference in terms of the night time build up! Lots of people told me to burp him religiously which we do, but I really don't think that trapped burps could cause this volume of farts IYSWIM.

[TheScience]

I haven't heard that dairy proteins in your milk could cause wind - I would have thought that if he was intolerant you would have seen other symptoms first.

[Eletheomel]

I can't offer any solutions, just to say that DS1 was like this until he was about 2 years old. We took him to the docs a few times (as it never went away - and you'd see him pull up his legs and the pain on his face while he was sleeping before he'd wake and fart) and the only explanation we got was that sometimes it can take their digestive systems a long time to mature, and they also suggested it could just be habit (waking to fart) but based on his discomfort level I discounted that.

Really hoping your baby gets over it quicker than DS1's - it's horrible to see. I considered (briefly) whether I should change my diet, but I couldnt' find anything really suggesting what to cut out that would stop farting discomfort, so just left it in the end.

Randomly enough DS2 started doing similar things once we started him on solids at 6 months (although he's not in as much pain as DS1) so we reckon that sort of rules out dairy issues for him.