Breast Feeding Advice wanted for wind suffering baby

[Ekky]

Hi, my 8wk old son is still feeding approx every 2hrs, he's suffered wind from pretty much straight away, I've tried colief/gripe water etc and have settled on infacol which is helping along with regular colic massage and various winding techniques but what I'm struggling with is during feeding - we start out fine then 10 mins in he gets really aggetated, crying, clearly trying to still feed but struggling on the nipple with arms & legs squirming. My assumption is it's wind building up and maybe he's still hungry but can't get past the pain but I'm not 100% sure. I stop & try to wind but rarely get any and obviously find it upsetting to see him so uncomfortable. My healthvisitor wasn't concerned as his weightgain is really healthy but I just want to make things as comfortable as possible for him.

Has anyone experienced this body language during feeding and found a solution?...

When my dd did this I offered her second breast, advice given by bf counsellor who said they can indicated when they finished a breast. You can always start again on that one next feed if you not sure.

This seemed to work forus when things were going well.

I don't have a particularly windy baby but she does this at least once a feed. I just sit her up as I found winding her (i.e. rubbing, patting her back, tummy, etc) was no more effective for me than just sitting her up. Sometimes she's angry when I sit her up as she really does want to continue feeding but I find a little break sometimes allows her to catch her breath (she's a guzzler!) or burp, or sometimes fart! Then I'll offer the same breast if she's not done a full feed or the other if she has. If she's had enough to eat, and she's still tetchy sitting on my knee, I'll put her over my shoulder as the pressure on her tummy sometimes help.

Well my 9 month old still feeds every 2 hours, so I'm not convinced that you need to worry about that bit!

About the squirming - we had this and 2 problems - so I'm not sure which one was the culprit:

1. Tongue tie - she found feeding quite stressfull
2. Cows milk protein intolerance.

So you could cut dairy out of your diet to see if it makes a difference, and check for tongue tie, or it might just be how your DS is - I;m no expert...

That's brilliant, thanks everyone for your advice. I've tried the take a break thing & offering the second breast and both seem to have helped combat the squirming. If the wind continues I think I'll try dropping diary to see if symptoms subside.

Thanks again, it's great to know help is out there!!

DD has colic/wind and it is horrible to witness (she's 9 weeks) - gripe water and infacol didn't do anything, avoiding brassicas, spicy food, dairy, gluten, wheat, anything in my diet didn't work... she sqirms too...

The ONLY thing so far which is relieving anything (not making it all better just improving) is me drinking fennel tea - I HATE fennel tea but it helps her not hurt so much so I drink it at least three times a day.

Just wanted to second what was said about cow's milk protein - both of my dds had a hideously awful time with colic at around that age. I tried millions of things & none of them worked until someone suggested dropping cow's milk from my diet when dd2 was around 6 weeks old. It made a massive difference to her, and I only wish I'd known to try it with poor dd1 when she was a baby. Goat's milk was fine, so I had that on my cereal and just switched to herbal teas as I don't like goat's milk in drinks. It was a bit of a wrench giving up cheese/yoghurt but well worth it for the difference it made to all of our lives! And it was only temporary - by around 6 months she'd outgrown the problem completely. Do give it a go - it might work for you as well.

... goats milk had the same affect here as cow's milk though so that doesn't work for everyone - and some LOs are intolerant to soya proteins as well! (We were fine on soya...)

It was near impossible to get wind out of dd, she was settled when she was feeding but once done unless she fell asleep and stayed asleep the crying would begin. Tried infacol and we had the worse night ever, I think it gathered all the wind up into one extremely painful ball in her tummy. Never used it or anything for it again, just a restricted diet and message.

8 weeks in it feels like it will go on forever but before you know it ds will be passing wind with ease. Good luck

Oh and I just remembered, I used to eat a couple of ginger cookies during one of the night feeds, the ginger is supposed to help get the wind up. This was many months in, when things weren't so rough, I don't know if things had improved simply because of time or the ginger.

Thanks ladies, I think I'm going to try cutting out diary too... Cheers x