What's your best burping technique?

[rumtumtugger]

I'd like to try out some new tried and tested techniques for getting those last stubborn pockets of air out!

[FavoriteThings]

Viva. That works both ways. She wants evidence. Just how many babies does she need internationally for "evidence". Thousands, millions. There must be millions. Is that enough evidence?

[FavoriteThings]

I think posting a MH retort breaks MN rules.

[frazzledbutcalm]

What's MH?

[AnythingNotEverything]

FT - I think tiktok has a point.

How do we know that there are stubborn pockets of air? This kind of questioning is really valuable.

Plenty of babies do not haven't trouble bringing up their own wind, and I've often been told that bf babies with a good latch don't take in a lot of air when feeding.

I think tiktok may have been healthily challenging the assumption. Lots of new parents spend ages trying to wind babies who would happily go to sleep without any fuss.

I don't think tiktok was trying to diminish anyone else's experience, just asking how we knew that these stubborn pockets of air exist.

I don't know tiktok personally, but in 6 months of reading the feeding boards, I respect her opinion and approach highly.

[Sockywockydoodah]

What on earth?

Tiktok has been here for years and gives excellent, impartial breastfeeding advice (have previously been a beneficiary of it myself). Actually I think she has said previously that she is a bf'ing counsellor.

I totally agree that burping babies is a cultural practice. Never done it myself (two babies, co sleep and not interested in waking up at night unless completely unavoidable).

[VivaLeThrustBadger]

I think a gold standard RCT would probably be fine.

[FavoriteThings]

What is RCT?

MH is mental health

Anything. "Plenty of babies do not have trouble bringing up their own wind".

Plenty of babies do have trouble bringing up their own wind. As evidence by real life and this thread and 300,000 to 600,000 babies born each year. There can be plenty of babies in both camps.

Number of babies born around the world each year. Approx 1,000,000,000 born each year? May have got a 0 or two extra or not enough 0's there! Plenty of babies that do need winding!

[Sockywockydoodah]

Uh, or plenty of parents believe their babies need winding? I'm sure some do, mind.

[VivaLeThrustBadger]

A randomised controlled trial.

It doesn't matter how many thousands or hundreds of thousands of babies have parents who say their babies needed burping this will not count as evidence. Ditto if you have hundreds of thousands of parents saying their kids didnt need burping.

The plural of anecdotal isn't data.

[rumtumtugger]

Some babies do need to be actively burped and some don't. I don't understand why some posters are about that. All babies are different.

Also - who would fund a double-blind, peer reviewed study on burping?! Just cos something hasn't been written up in a scientific journal doesn't mean it doesn't have a grain of truth to it.

[FavoriteThings]

But many of us experience that babies need winding. But rl doesnt count it appears. Only science. And I speak as being related to a scientist.Actually, more than 1.

[tiktok]

FT, you're right to be wary of people on the internet :)

As it happens, though, I have been here for years, and MN certainly know who I am. I am a breastfeeding counsellor with NCT and I have higher (non-medical) science-related and breastfeeding education related qualifications (I don't want to go into detail as I prefer not to out myself, even to close colleagues).

NCT has no views on burping - this is my own personal lack of certainty on display here. You can trust I know what I am talking about when I say I think there is room for doubt about most babies being in pain if they are not winded, and you can also trust I know sufficient about anatomy and physiology to make me doubtful that blowing on a baby's skin will make air in the stomach rise.

I've tried to be fairly light-hearted and show my scepticism mildly, and to challenge people (a bit) to think, so they may be less likely to be dogmatic about these things. I think it's fascinating that people have different experiences of babies' behaviours and responses, and I've already explained that active 'winding' won't do any harm (unless it's roughly done, of course) so of course people can please themselves.

But I don't know of any evidence that it is necessary, for most babies.

This has got some people really annoyed, for some reason.

Hope that explains things a bit better :)

[FavoriteThings]

Quite rum. And glad you started this thread, for all those real life parents. I for 1 am grateful.

[HollaAtMeBaby]

FavoriteThings your posts are very odd. Are you saying that nobody can ever believe anything based on evidence? Or that there is no such thing as evidence?

[VivaLeThrustBadger]

I'm also glad the thread was started. It's been interesting, am also a real life parent. With a baby I burped. Whether she actually needed burping or not I don't know. But if I patted her enough she'd tend to do it and I thought at the time that's what I needed to do, that all bakes needed winding.

She never actually showed signs of distress after most of her feeds. The times she did seem to have tummy ache burping didnt help.

As a midwife Id always say if you think it might help or it seems to help then fine. But that there may not always be air that needs to be brought up.

[FavoriteThings]

tiktok, why didnt you say some of that in the first place. I know you can write what you like, but just saying something about science is vague in the extreme.

Glad you have got qualifications at least.

So most of what you post is just to get people to "think"? All your doubts are not actually based on anything?

[tiktok]

As you are related to a scientist (wow!) FT, you won't mind re-reading my posts and seeing that in fact, I am not discounting real life at all. There are some babies who are troubled by digestive effects and some of these are happier when they produce a burp. That is real life. I believe in it :)

But none of that experience indicates that for most babies, active burping/winding is necessary to avoid pain.

We pat, jiggle and do all sorts to our babies and i suggest a lot of the time it makes no difference, because they will burp anyway.

It would be difficult to do a big RCT, for sure....but a small one, comparing two lots of mothers and babies over a couple of days, on a maternity ward would be possible.

[tiktok]

FT, I'm against people being dogmatic, and stating things that are based solely on their experience and extrapolating out from that into a generality. I'm against people worrying for no reason.

[FavoriteThings]

Scientific evidence can be dodgy. Science changes its mind from one week to the next. If you ask any scientist, they happily tell you this.

[tiktok]

PS, also 'my doubts' are based on what I know of feeding, of babies' behaviours, and on anatomy and the digestive process.

[tiktok]

No, scientists won't say this.
Science progresses, building on what has been done before. Sometimes things do get overturned or clarified.

But to say 'science changes its mind from one week to the next' makes you sound ignorant and trivialises good science.
Ask your relative(s).

[FavoriteThings]

tiktok. I just think you are not really taking into account enough the millions and millions of real life mothers with real life babies who do need to wind them.
I think we may finally have come to some sort of agreement.

[FavoriteThings]

"Science changes its mind from one week to the next". This week, next week, the one after... there will be examples in the newspaper and on the internet, and talking to scientists, where it has done just that.

[VivaLeThrustBadger]

But all those millions of mums and millions of babies who think their babies need winding - how many actually need winding and how many just think they need winding? That's the interesting question to which no one has the answer.

[VivaLeThrustBadger]

And science doesn't change its mind. Saying it does is a foolish statement on two levels.