DS 2 - 4 weeks old breast feeding - advice please

[foxy1]

Hello

I have a 4 week old and am breast feeding him. My concern is that he never feeds for very long in the day (5/10 mins). It seems to be a really windy baby and when he feeds I can hear him swallowing the milk and it going through his body. He may also pass wind and curl up legs and then start crying and stop feeding. Sometimes he may only feed for couple of minutes. Even though I wind him he doesn't seem to settle. He also gets hiccups on some occasions.He doesn't like lying on his back - prefers lying on side. I have had him in the bed with me and night as he seems to want contact and won't sleep otherwise. He feeds every 3 hours approx but not for very long at all. I am not sure whether he has bad colic or silent reflux as he seems to get quite distressed when feeding sometime. HV coming on monday to weigh him - last weigh in 2 weeks ago was fine - not sure how this will be.

Any advice would really be appreciated. Thank you

sounds to me like he may be feeding to stop the pain, then making it worse IUSWIM, I would personally suggest using infacol before a feed to try and negate the wind a bit/helps it come up easier, then feed, wind and feed again from other boob, then wind and job should be done until next feed time. I used to keep a diary of both dd's feed times when they were young, so I had a vague idea of what the hell was going on! dd2 to give you an idea fed 13times a day for the first 4 weeks then cut to 10 by 6 weeks. HTH's

I would agree with using infacol and keeping a diary. I did both with my ds. Once he is 1 month old, you can also use gripe water. I found this was much better at bring up the wind. He settled better once I started using this.

Let us know how you get on

Hi Foxy

Agree with the Infacol advice.

Wouldn't worry about the 'short' nature of the feeds tho, both mine fed like this in the early days, apart from the evening cluster feed that went on between 7 and 9.
HTH

if it helps neither of mine breastfed for longer than 10 mins ever .. I produced milk quite quickly .. they gained weight steadily .. so I if he's gaining weight I wouldn't worry

I think the advice you've got is good you might want to try lying him down and gently circling his legs movement to help release the wind .. or a tummy massage (clockwise, firm pressure, circles)

HTH

Thanks for everyones advice. Brought infacol today so will try this. thanks again

The tummy massage is great - I did that. Use warm olive oil when you do this. It really helps. My ds fed for 5-10 mins aswell

.. Infact he fed like this every 1-2 hours for quite a while and then it only really went down to every 2-3 hours. I'm sure evrything will fall into place

It's a good idea to do the baby massage in the evening follwed by a warm bath. Both of these really helped my ds who had colic

Classic time for them to be unsettled.
Cranial osteopathy worth a try too.

it really helps if you don't have any caffeine at all and keep your dairy intake to a minimum
i know i drank lots of tea whilst bf - sitting around wtih lots of visitors! however dd's definitely were better when i cut it out.

OK just a couple of suggestions:
feeding in the bath can help
what position do you use? have you thought about holding him upright while you feed and not horizontal? then keeping him upright for a while?
the move I used to shift wind was to lie the baby on his back and bend the knees up to the tummy, and gently wiggle