BF and excessive wind (baby not me!)

[SandyR]

Hi, I am BF my son who is 2.5 weeks old. In the last week or so he seems to have a lot of wind (and explosive poos), which seems painful as he's grimacing quite a lot and folding/unfolding his legs - seems worse at night. I'm wondering if its something to do with my diet? I have been eating a lot of bananas (4/5 large a day) - could this do it? Or anything else? Maybe this type of wind is normal? (I'm a first time mum). Any advice would be greatly received. Thanks.

first time mum, bf also, here as well. mine has had same from 3-4 weeks and is gradually getting better as he approaches week 10. as far as i've found so far its one of those things; seems to be due to gut slowly colonising with the digestive bacteria it needs and to ease with maturity.

i was so upset to see my young man ache with it that we used infacol until last week in the hope of making the wind easier to pass. think we saw a slight improvement, but mostly it let us feel we were dong something...

holding baby over yr shoulder when he's really struggling can help, as can ensuring always well winded before during and after feeds. cranial osteopathy was of some use i think in helping him calm.

in terms of food the only real affects i identified in my diet where my one cup of coffee made him jittery so cut it out to great effect, also lentils. Mind you i had a curry that i thought mild and avoided pulses last week. poor lad really got windy then, and had rather tangy bm. won't do that again in a hurry. he copes fine with copiuos chilli and garlic though and showed no benefit when i cut them out.

good luck and i will read yr other answers with interest!

I had same problem with dd, now nearly 3 months and has been steadily improving all the time. We used infacol (and still do) regularly and it needs to build up, ie works better if given with every feed. There are some old threads on this subject including one started by me. I avoided onions, and curries, cabbage - didn't really miss that ! tomatos and citrus. No idea if it helped, but I have reintroduced them now and not noticed any problems. DD still does explosive poos sometimes, and gets the odd time where she looks like her tummy hurts. I find keeping her upright, gently rubbing her tummy or laying her across my knees, tummy down, gently rubbing her back helps a bit.

Good luck with it (and indeed with everything), and as I said - it does improve!

Hi SandyR. If its any help, bananas give me terrible wind too! I have read on here somewhere that there isn't a conclusive link with diet & windy babes, however.

My DS used to get wind with bf but I eventually discovered that during the inital let-down phase, the milk would literally shoot out causing him to gulp furiously to keep up. I decided to take him off when I felt the let-down coming, wait for it to stop gushing out then put him back on. It only took a min but it made all the difference to his wind.

Good luck!

SandyR I have 3 children and all had wind at some point. All you can do is try to make them comfortable ie some babies like slight pressure on their tums so hold with bub facing away from you in one arm (so head is supported) or lay across lap and rub or pat gently on back. Don't believe what you hear about taking them out in the wind though - this will not "give" them wind. Do you swallow wind when outside??? The other thing to watch for is if any wind he passes smells. My 3rd child had really smelly wind from very young age and asked my doc about it who said it was fine. At 7 months my ds was daignosed with severe food allergies to wheat, dairy, fish, egg and peanut. Apparently really smelly wind can be a sign of food allergy through your breast milk. This is obviously not the same for all babies but had I known I would have cut out foods earlier. hth

Thanks for all the advice. Merryberry - that's interesting about the digestive bacteria building up and also the lentils. It did start around the time I made myself a nice healthy lentil and bean soup come to think of it. Bit obvious really now I think about it. Thanks for the winding tips, I will try some of these positions. Karmamother - he does gulp sometimes at the beginning, I seem to have a lot of milk gushing out too. Does anyone know how long you should wind for? or how many burps you should expect? Dying for a curry but too worried it might make him spontaneously combust or something!!!

Yes, he used to gulp with the initial flood of milk. I would prise him off, (which made him scream anyway - but at least he avoided the gulping) wait until the milk stopped gushing then latch him back on. I did lose a bit of milk this way but another mum on a different thread says she collects quite a bit of spare milk by using breast shells in her bra. I suppose you could even hold a bottle under your nipple to catch it, if you wanted to save it.

Babies are windy little buggers, they really are, and they take a while to get used to the totally new feeling of digesting food as they've never done it before. Personally, I can't see how your food could cause wind in a baby via breastmilk and I've never limited my diet. If your ds was really in pain, he'd cry. I'd guess he's just disconcerted.

Hi, it might be worth taking a look at this link to an article from the Guardian about breastfeeding counsellors in Oxford and their theories about colic in breastfed babies.

The Cure for Colic?

Hope this helps you, these first weeks are not an easy time!

Roxswood, thanks for that link. Really, really interesting, especially the bit about switching breasts too early. I will try keeping him on one for longer and hopefully that along with the burping will solve the problem.

My DS is like this. we have puut him on colief drops which have improved things a lot. they are a bit of a fiddle when bf but worth it - they break down lactose. www.colief.com
available on prescription too. good luck