First time mom- gassy baby- is this normal?

[MaariyahA]

Hi guys, I am really worried and upset by seeing baby in pain. I am unsure if this is normal or if there is an issue.

My baby is six weeks old, he is currently on Aptamil and we use the mam bottle.

Baby has always been quite a good drinker from birth, he usually has either 4 ounce or 5 ounce and feeds every 3-4 hours and sometimes goes longer on an evening.

I have had this issue from around three weeks, I first noticed the issue when feeding him, he would (not always) cry during a feed and I could hear his stomach gurgling and making noises, it took me a few days to realize what the issue was and I started to do tummy exercises, this stopped the crying during a feed and got quite a bit of farts out.

Baby burps sometimes multiple times. I keep him upright for a while also. Now he cries quite a few times a day with tummy pain, i always do the exercises and he always farts. I would say I do this around 3/4 times a day.

Just now, he was crying in pain, I did the exercises and he got around 8 farts out. This is also around the 4th time today.

He does struggle to poo and cries when it is time. He is formula fed, I have never changed his formula as I just don’t know if there is an issue or if this is part of being a newborn.

I do see bubbles in his mouth sometimes after a feed and he has started to spit up (he never used to do this but is looking like cottage cheese)

i would love any advice, from a worried mummy xx

People will say that every formula is the same but I don't agree. With my first we started on aptilmil and he was constipated so we tried another formula based on advice from the health visitor.

Have you tried infacol? Again my first struggled to burp so before we changed formula we used infacol to relieve gas. It does take a few days to help so isn't instant.

I would try that first and/or consider trying a different formula

@lifehappens12 yes, he initially was struggling with burping, it used to take me forever. I started the infacol around 3 weeks ago, his now burping (sometimes burps multiple times after also) but it’s still not helping.

Sometimes even with the infacol he does not burp and I have to keep trying and trying until he does.

Theres just so much trapped wind, he cries in pain also :(. I spend a lot of time just doing the exercises. I get lots of farts out and he also farts himself throughout the day.

he does only poop once every 2/3 days. The doctor said this was normal though and he has been like this pretty much since birth with the poooing.

Do you pace feed?

My daughter is 7 weeks old, and she was exactly the same - very gassy, gurgling tummy, very uncomfortable when trying to push wind out and had cottage cheese looking vomit/spit up. She also has had issues pooping from birth (going once every 2-3 days).

We had her on just the regular Aptamil formula when she was born, but we have since tried pretty much every formula to no avail.

We took her to the doctors and they prescribed her Aptamil Pepti 1 for a suspected cows milk allergy and she is completely different now - less gassy, next to no vomiting and spit up and pooping atleast once a day, sometimes twice or 3 times a day.

Maybe this might help for your little one 😊

This was EXACTLY our baby boy!!!

Our boy is 4.5 months old now. His trapped wind and gas started very very early on - first few weeks.

we tried everything, NO gas/colic drops worked at all. We tried gripe water. Infacol. Please don’t rely on these because I would get so frustrated when they wouldn’t work.

stick with your mam anticolic bottles they will be working a lot better than other bottles even if it doesn’t seem like it.

For the pumps (we also has bad constipation with him) the ONLY thing that was a quckfix were Windi’s. They seemed very scary, especially to use on such small babies but essentially you put a little short tube up their bottom and wind will come up. Or poop for us! Hold it in for 30’seconds. They are EXTREMELY sate, you can buy them from boots so that eased my worry.

Lastly, please know that they will grow out of it very soon. My boy was such an active sleeper because of his trapped wind, so much grunting at night but it genuinely start to ease at 14 weeks so just persevere as patronising as that sounds. I honestly felt there was no end in sight.

The only other thing that helped was tummy time. Lots of burps and pumps would come out. We tried all the massages recommended but tummy time did help

Another vote for Infacol.

My DC had a brief phase of this. I think it went away after about 3 weeks on Infacol and the doctor said it was quite common to have a gassy phase that children do grow out of.

I also forgot to mention that our little boy had tongue tie which made him get such trapped wind off his bottles. Have a google and look into the signs of tongue tie (clicking noises with tongue when drinking, pulling away when drinking). We saw a huge improvement when we got his tongue tie cut