Uncomfortable gassy BF baby - intolerance?

[Chocolatecake87]

My 3 month old baby has never slept well. Max 2 hour stints at night and often we only get one or two of those. Then it’s every hour or 30 minutes.

He often wakes himself up (and me due to bedsharing) writhing around uncomfortable with digestive wind. He often then wants to comfort feed to help himself get back to sleep, clearly exhausted. We often have to do bicycle legs to help fart him (SO many farts!) and give him gripe water in the middle of the night. This can help him settle for an hour or so but then the gassy routine starts again.

He also vomits regularly but not enormous amounts, but it can be after most feeds. Sometimes he just swallows it again, which seems to give him hiccups. He has also had mucusy poos since he was 3 weeks old. Sometimes excessive amounts of mucus - either yellow, green or yellowy green in colour.

He’s also always been a fussy feeder. I think I have a fast let down as he pulls and clamps down on my nipple and gulps a lot, so I imagine this doesn’t help.

But I can’t help but feel like there might be something I’m eating that is upsetting him. I’m thinking of eliminating dairy for a few weeks to see if there’s any improvement but is there anything else anyone has found has caused similar issues?

@Chocolatecake87 youre describing my baby!! Did you ever get to the bottom of this?

@EloiseMidgen We eventually discovered blood in his nappy after we trialled some formula. I then cut dairy out and symptoms improved but took around 4-5 weeks and it was gradual. When I tested reintroducing dairy, the blood came back so confirmed he has CMPA.

He still wakes a lot at night but is less uncomfortable. I think getting older also helped him manage his gas better.

(Name change)

@SleepyMama321 thanks so much for replying - we are also thinking CMPA and I have just started an elimination diet.

the only thing that isn’t tallying with CMPA is that my baby is generally a pretty happy chap in the daytime (although he is extremely flatulent in the daytime!)

I could have written this myself!!! My baby is also 3 months. The gassy squirms are the worst. We went through weeks of it.

One night he had accidentally rolled onto his front and slept 3.5 hours. So now we let him sleep on his front and doesn't squirm anymore. I know it's totally against sids advice but it works for him. Good luck x

I had this with my fourth babe. She vomited watery milk that splashed everwhere and had very odd runny poo. After weeks of trying to work out what the problem was, I found foremilk/hindmilk imbalance on KellyMom. She was doing too much foremilk gulping and not getting enough hindmilk so she vomited up the foremilk she didn't need.

The fix is not switching sides every feed - block feeding . One side all morning, other side all afternoon, then swap again for half the night and the other half. After a few days of doing this her poo started to look normal and the vomiting stopped.

This can also happen if you have a forceful let down and your babe can't cope with the flow. Read here and the links at the bottom of this page

kellymom.com/bf/got-milk/supply-worries/fast-letdown/

@shilohsmum I’m trying to encourage him to be an early roller so that he can go on his front sooner rather than later!

@orangefoot I don’t think this is us as tbh he’s never really changed sides anyway (he’s always been chunky so was clearly getting enough milk) but thank you for the information anyways :)

My daughter wasn't losing weight slow to gain or thin either. I had already tried excluding foods on my side and it had made no difference.

@EloiseMidgen My DS is also a fairly happy chappy in the daytime but he was utterly miserable as a newborn!