Newborn sleep behaviour (odd or quite normal?)

[birthofawoman]

First time mum, here! A little freaked out by/concerned about the behaviour of my newborn during sleep.

Is it normal for newborns to be really animated in the face whilst they sleep? I'm talking smiling, eyes wide open and moving around (sometimes even rolling), cheek twitching, eyebrows/forehead raising... etc. It's quite freaky at times. In fact, as I type this, a little laugh just escaped my sleeping newborn's mouth!

In addition to these facial movements, my newborn also often moves other parts of his body in his sleep and I'm starting to think I've got a gassy baby. He'll wake up grunting and crying out in pain 😣 the source of the pain appears to be his abdomen. He's exclusively breastfed and at first I wasn't winding him after feeds because I was told by a number of midwives that "breastfed babies don't need to be winded"... only to find out from other midwives that this isn't true! I feel like he has 'backed up' or trapped wind that won't be relieved by just 'winding', alone. Anyone have any ideas as to how I can help my newborn?

Thanks in advance!

I've never winded either of my breastfed babies, they both used to feed to sleep and I'd just leave them.

I have an exclusively breastfed 12 week old. He is most definitely a windy baby and also moves and grunts/cries out when waking up witb wind - definitely wind as eventually he manages to pass some huge farts!
I do burp him although often finding he just doesn't burp at night when he's been feeding during his night sleep.
It was really bad at the start we ended up getting infancol and gripe water but to be honest the only thing that worked was he got a little bit bigger and can now move some of the wind out himself better.

My 3 week old DS is the exact same, we've even nicknamed him our little guinea pig from all the grunting

I'm exclusively BF'ing and 100% wind him after every feed and sometimes mid feed. He's a very windy baby and struggles to get it out the other end sometimes! His little face goes through a range of expressions until he manages to fart, some have been so loud they trigger his startle reflex.

Try winding after a feed and see if it helps though I did check with my HV and she said it's normal for some BF babies to get wind.

Ime yes it's normal - DS was a very loud sleeper as a newborn and used to pull all kinds of weird faces. You absolutely do need to wind - I ebf-d and always winded him. For his night feeds it was tricky as I wanted to keep him asleep but I used to just hold him upright against my chest for a few minutes (no back patting or anything) and he'd burp and I'd put him down again gently. He did get better with it all and is now at 11mo pretty much silent when he sleeps (although he does sometimes laugh still!) so it will improve.