Does rooting always mean they are hungry?

[anchovies]

Am breastfeeding ds2 (8 days old) and during the night he is very unsettled. He alternates between explosive poos, frantic rooting and general squirming. At the moment I am just letting him feed whenever he wants but about half of the time he is not that interested. He does take good 15 minutes feeds in the day when I know he is full up and falls asleep but at night time he just sort of has a go for 5 mins or so then falls asleep for a bit then wakes up, poos/squirms and gets upset before he starts rooting again. He doesn't seem to have wind though? Not sure whether I should perservere with trying to settle him without feeding him or just go with the flow and feed him a bit everytime he starts rooting?

No my children did it when they had bad wind. The milk acts as a pain relief. then they would throw the milk up and be hngry again!!!

At 8 days you are safest just interpreting this as a sign he needs feeding, anchovies....if he's still doing it in a couple of weeks or so, then you can maybe think again.

anchovies - sounds like you are doing very well !

My baby was a terribly unsettled one up to about 2 months old esp. in the middle of the night. Trouble is you never know for sure whether a baby has colic or not.

I tried various colic things, none seemed to work. A surgeon friend and his wife gave me an excellent tip though which really helped with winding after a feed: I would feed, then DH or I would hold him upright on our shoulders for at least 15 - 20 after each feed. We also carried him around alot, the best position being tummy down in a sort of rugby ball position lying flat on our arm.

I know this is no use in the middle of the night, but after a while you will find that the colic is only a problem in the early evening, not in the middle of the night and the winding during the day should help too. Most babies are far more settled after the first few weeks. After a while they will learn to fall asleep very quickly after waking in the middle of the night for a feed.

As for rooting, yes, do feed him whenever he roots. Trouble is you never know when he might actually be hungry and it's best just to feed IMO. Even just a few minutes of suckling would calm my DS down, so I just let him suckle whenever. Sometimes it would be for a full feed, sometimes he seemed to get bored after a few minutes, so I just learned to be relaxed about it and read his cues.

Good luck !

Not always. My DS would root whenever he wanted comfort. I always fed him when he rooted when he was little because I wasn't totally sure if he was hungry, knew it would be good for my milk supply and also it was the quickest way to quieten him! Once he was a few weeks old I gave him a dummy if I was sure he wasn't hungry.