5 week old choking/gas tummy pains advice please

[sthitch]

My 5 week old dd keeps choking on her milk - it was so bad tonight that we ended up ringing 999 it went on so long but luckily managed to get her breathing before they needed to send someone- it is the most horrendous thing, she goes blue and her eyes start to close- absolutely terrifying. I've been to the GP and they weren't remotely bothered or concerned. Basically I'm looking for advice for when she does it - I never knew you can choke so badly on a liquid. Afterwards she was desperate to sleep but we kept her up as we were so worried.

She's also getting really bad tummy pains from gas after the odd feed- to the point where she screams and goes totally rigid, neither infacol or gripe water is cutting it (and she chokes on the gripe water with it being a thinner consistency to milk) we try and put her over a pillow and rub her back, bicycle legs, pushing legs into belly gently ... does anyone have any ways that helped to relieve their babies? We ended up giving her a dummy and she's so desperate for it to comfort her during these times that she has her mouth wide open and shakes her head from side to side, when she will take the dummy it seems to help a bit. Any advice would be great.

That sounds so frightening

DD is 14 weeks now but regularly choked on her feeds (thankfully she never turned blue) until she was about 8 weeks. We noticed it happened most frequently when she was tired. It was as though she couldn't fit in a breath and so kept sucking desperately instead of unlatching. I suspect my flow was too fast. I took to unlatching her at the first sign that she was sucking too fast and winding her multiple times during each feed. Does your DC wind ok? DD was about 5 weeks before she would wind properly so I don't know if this contributed.

For the tummy pains, slowing down the feeds helped, as did keeping her upright for 30 minutes after each feed, especially at night. I also feed her at a slight angle so her head is higher than her tummy. The other thing was trying to distract her from feeding too close together - I think the tummy pain made her want more. Even keeping her occupied for an extra 5 minutes seemed to help.

Does your DD have bouts of being very sick too?

We bought new bottles with slow release teats but she's learnt how to suck them really fast and will gulp the milk down, I try taking it away and slowing her down but she seems to panic that we're not going to give it back and drinks it even faster. Winding is hit and miss, even when she does do some really good burps she can start the pain cry about 10 mins after. Sickness is also hit and miss, sometimes she's very very sick- the dr gave us infant gaviscon, I used it on two feeds but afterwards she cried in pain for about 6 hours so I'm put off using that.

I think I might try breaking up her feed with a dummy? It probably won't go down too well but I'll try - as well as keeping her upright etc x

Has she been checked for tongue tie? The choking and gas could be a sign. Might be worth getting her assessed. The Infant Tongue Tie UK & Europe Facebook page is really good for information and recommendations for who to contact.

It sounds terrifying, I hope you get some answers quickly. You definitely shouldn't have been fobbed off by your GP.

We have input from a speech and language therapist for feeding issues with baby DS. He is FF and we feed him quite upright and also thicken his feeds with Carobel (on the advice of SALT).

I don’t know if this would be right for your baby, but just wanted to let you know that there are specialist support services for feeding issues. You would need to get referred by GP though.

Hope things get easier soon

Have u checked her for reflux and milk allergy?