Very windy breastfed baby - is there anything I can do?

[MrsTittleMouse]

DD2 is 2 weeks and exclusively BF. She is really really windy though and it is heartbreaking to see her little face screwed up in pain. It's also starting to really affect her sleep (and mine!).

I can at least get rid of the wind at the top end, but is there anything that I can do about the bottom end? I can hear her in her cot straining and the best that I have done so far is to cuddle her and rub her back, which doesn't really do much. Has anyone else been through this and have wonderful tips to deal with it?

Have you tried lying her on her back and raising her legs up as far as they will go ?

You can quite often get a good ammount of trapped wind out that way !

Am no expert, but how about looking at what you are eating..might be something really simple that you eat every day that could be disagreeing with DD.
One of my friends would not eat marmite when BFing as said it caused wind in her DC.
Not sure how true this is and could be a load of rubbish but hopefully an expert will be along shortly to advise.

You can:

Gently bend her knees in towards her tummy a few times - it's like a yoga move that makes almost everyone fart!

Gently massage her lower abdomen (tricky through a nappy so in a warm room, naked can be better) in clockwise circles.

Lay her over one leg, tummy down while rubbing her back and supporting her head - gentle pressure on the tummy can help with burps and farts btw.

Try the 'colic hold' - difficult to describe but easy to do. Drape DD over your forearm, head by your elbow, your hand tucked between her legs, and her side/back against your middle. Again, gentle pressure on the tummy helps, plus you can sway, rub her back, keep her horizontal or angle her bottom down a bit - latter helps with burps. Not sure if it will help directly with farting but it's a popular position with lots of squirmy babies and I could kiss the feet of the Mum who showed it to me when my DD was tiny!

Hope something helps there.

hv advised me to cycle baby's legs round during a nappy change, which seems to help - possibly because i sing Queen's Bicycle song along with it...

she also suggested a teaspoon of cool boiled water after a feed, but i haven't tried that. i'm drinking peppermint tea to settle my own stomach so hopefully that will filter into my milk?

A got SO much better at just over 3 weeks - before that it was heartbreaking to see but i think he's simply learnt to burp and fart now (5 weeks)

How about

this

and

this

for a bit about diet, breastmilk and stuff to avoid.

I drove myself nuts trying to work out if something I was eating was making DD more windy, and by the time I'd exhausted all trial and error investigations I think she'd grown out of it!

Never heard the water thing - doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Warmth on the tummy via a bath or a (very well covered) hot water bottle might ease discomfort though..?