Baby poo question...lovely

[wukter]

Hi all, long time lurker but have finally bit the bullet to post.
My DD (first) is 5 weeks old today - an angel and we're delighted. I am not sure whether to be worried or not tho, she's in terrible discomfort when passing her poos. (not everytime).
She grunts and groans for maybe half an hour, sometimes goes red and screams.
she has always been a windy baby, always quite hard to get her wind up- or down even.
Sometimes she passes a v small dry greenish one, then the main feature (loose, orangey, copiuos).
She can be very unsettled in the evening, can scream for hours - again some evenings are worse than others.

She is BF exclusively, and we have started using Infacol particularly for the evening feeds.

Sorry for the essay but hoping someone can let me know if this is normal? I have mentioned it to HV but she reckons some babies are just like that...but if she's in pain surely something can be done?

Thanks in advance!

Sounds entirely normal to me.
I don't think you do anything about it. Just distract her a bit until she gets more used to how her body feels.

My DS was much the same. It sorted itself out over time - think when he was 3 months he was used to pooing

He also cried every evening between about 5 and 10pm, but I put this down to general done-in-ness. Everyone else's babies seemed to do it too, like they'd reached total saturation point with the world and couldn't take any more.

sounds normal to me, my ds (now 16wks and my first too) was the same at that age, the HV said to me that some babies are just more able to tell when they are going to do a poo than others (which I'm hoping will come in handy when we get to potty training stage! ). My ds is also BF exclusively and I use infacol for eve feeds. It seemed to stop bothering him at about 9wks and he got better at getting wind up then as well. I think as their digestive system matures then all of these things get easier and don't bother them as much. He now rarely has probs with wind and his poos have settled down to one/two a day of the sloppy type (rather than what seemed like constantly with huge variety in type/colour!)

I don't think there is any solution other than doing what you are with infacol etc and soothing her as best you can. When my ds seemed to be in a lot of discomfort with this he liked lying on his tummy on dh's chest and having his back rubbed so that might be worth a try if you don't do it already. Baby massage is also supposed to help wih these sorts of problem but we never got around to going to any classes but that might be worth a try if there are any near you?

Best of luck!

congrats on your lo, wukter

ds used to scream for two solid hours every night from the age of 20 days to 3 months, when it switched off. It's one of the forms of colic; I think cyteen's got the cause just right. It usually goes around 3 months.

hth

Thanks a mill for the reasurance...their poor little tums though

Now she's over a month old, you might find gripe water helpful to deal with her wind. My DD is 15 weeks; she's always been quite windy and very pukey, and quite often the gripe water does the trick when she's very squirmy and rigid with trapped wind.