Breastfed baby distressed before pooing

[Lemondrop99]

My DS is 12 weeks old. He's always been very windy. He went from pooping multiple times a day to only once every 3-5 days. The poonamis are horrific, breach his nappy and wreck all his clothes.

Not ideal but I could live with that. From what I understand, not going for several days then having a poonami is common for breastfed babies. The problem is, the closer he gets to needing a poo, the more uncomfortable and distressed he gets.

I knew he needed to go last night, but he didn't. He woke up multiple times and spent the entire night desperately trying to sleep, but straining, grunting, thrashing and crying intermittently. Every 5-10 minutes, through the entire night. Neither of us got any sleep and I actually gave up trying to sleep at all at 3.30am.

Then he'll be ok for a day or two, then the cycle will start again. It's wrecking his night sleep and leaves him miserable and overtired during the day. I'm exhausted and it's very frustrating.

Is it normal for a baby to become so uncomfortable before pooing?

It can be normal. Does massage help at all, or doing leg cycling?

We do massage and cycling which helps a bit with the wind but doesn't seem to help with the poo/sleep disruption issue

It's common for babies to grunt and strain even when passing normal stools because they're just getting used to how things work.

Sometimes my LO will get to day 3 of no poo and be really miserable about it, I have found that gripe water usually sorts it out pretty quickly with a huge poo explosion and then he falls asleep instantly! It's not the best advice for long term management but I'd say worth having in the house.

Also give the "I love you' baby massage technique a try and if you have one in your area I'd highly recommend attending baby massage classes - they usually cost £25 for the course and I've found them invaluable for bonding, getting baby to sleep, helping with wind/poo etc.

Thanks. We've been on a baby massage course, which was lovely, and learned the massages you mention. I'll try to be more diligent in doing the messages daily and see if that helps. We tried Gripe Water for wind but never for poo, I'll give it a go!

The issue isn't so much that he's groaning passing the stool, but for 12 hrs leading up to it 😕

Do they grow out of this? And if so, roughly when? It's frustrating because he's not too bad at nights normally, but pre-poonami nights are horrific for all involved

I had this too, for a baby that wasn't usually windy, but it started at about three months. Was described by everyone's as "3-months colic", but I found that cutting out all milk (including chocolate) and replacing with soy milk, and two months later, lactose free milk, made the problem disappear within 2 days. It was like magic!
Prior to the three month mark, milk and cappuccinos and ice cream had caused no problems but it started suddenly. She was writhing and screaming for half an hour until the stool passed.

And once she was a year old I went back to normal milk and it was totally fine. (Kept on breastfeeding)
Good luck and hope it is more comfortable for your DC soon.

Hmmm interesting. A few people have mentioned cutting out dairy re: his wind, although I've reads conflicting advice on how much dairy affects breastmilk so haven't tried it yet.....mainly because chocolate is basically what's getting me through the days!!! might be time to give it a go though.

Have you tried probiotics? My DS was s bit older but used to scream and cry when pooing, and on lactulose three times a day, we were recommended probiotics and within a week or two they had changed everything.

If was suggested to us because DS had been on antibiotics, but it might help for other reasons.

That was 2 years ago and he's never had an issue since, and only had one course of them, and then we phased out the lactulose.

We used bio gracia baby ones which are just drops to add to milk.