Baby straining and in discomfort from 3am

[Beingmum2]

Hi everyone,

I'm really hoping somebody can help! My 7 week old is in a lot of discomfort straining from around 3am every morning for hours. I can hear his stomach gurgling and he passes so much wind. He goes tense and writhes and strains continuously. He is exclusively breastfed. The doctors thought it might be reflux related so we have started on omeprazole, but honestly I think it may have made it slightly worse. Has anyone else experienced this or has any advice? Thank you!

DD would get like this. She just wasn't great at burping up wind so it traveled downwards and cause pain.

I would still try to wind her with firm back rubs with a feeding break between each side and then after a feed but also at regular intervals throughout the day and definitely before bedtime, lots of reverse cycling her legs and pushing knees into her tummy to release as much as possible.

DD turned out to have a mild dairy allergy which didn't come to light until weaning and I wonder if this was the cause.

Also, I'd been advised by a health visitor to drink a glass of orange juice a day for vitamins and then read later on that citrus can irritate the baby's digestive system through breast milk. There was a noticeable improvement when I stopped the orange juice.

If it were me, I'd ditch the omeprazole just because I wouldn't want to be using medication unless it definitely made a difference.

Thank you! I was thinking about trying dairy elimination. Did your daughter just get better in night over time or was she like that until you were weaning?

There was a noticeable improvement once DD started crawling as the movement seemed to help the wind make it's own way out.

That was 9m but there was definitely an improvement before then as even once I realised she was allergic to dairy (8m) I didn't drop it from my diet as by then her wind wasn't so bad anyway. I bf her until 23m with no changes to my diet.

If I have another baby who seems to have issues early on (DD also had very frequent dirty nappies) I would probably dry dropping or at least reducing my dairy intake. It's difficult though as I have my own wide range of allergies ruling out dairy replacement milks and osteopenia which means I try to have high calcium intake.