Gas
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Gas
April 2004
Help!!
My baby is 1 month old (corrected age) and start to suffer
from gas pain. It is not like colic - it is all day with couple
of hours break.
NN
Your baby could have gastroesophageal reflux. Try keeping the
child upright for at least a half hour after feeding and burping
your baby extremely throughly and having him or her sleep with
head elevated--in a carseat or raise one end of the crib mattress
six inches or more.
http://www.infantrefluxdisease.com/gerdinfo.htm
Good luck
susan
Get Gripe Water. It's awesome! I'm sure they must carry it at
health food stores. Even my husband and I were feeling really
bad the other night- gassy and bloaty- and took the adult
dosage and felt better almost immediately. Love the stuff!
CB
My son had horrible gas for the four weeks between his second
week and his sixth. We gave him Little Tummy's simethicone
drops but found that its success, if any, was marginal. It
hurts to see your baby in so much pain, but the folks at LLL
told us that some babies have stages of extreme gassiness,
especially around the one month age. You can try to mitigate it
by burping multiple times during your nursing sessions, and
trying simethicone drops. What worked for Isaac though was
pumping his legs and rubbing his belly (clockwise, I think; it
was months ago now!). We couldn't prevent the gas, but we could
expedite his expulsion of it!
I will say this after all of that: I think that more than
having gas, our babies don't know WHAT is going on with their
bodies when they do have it and that unknown is what's
bothering them the most. Isaac still farts up a storm
sometimes, but it doesn't faze him at all anymore. Hope this
helps
Ginna
Try mylicon or ''infant gas relief drops'' that they sell at
Walgreens or Longs. It helped our daughter some of the
time. But, I think that it takes a couple of months for babies'
digestion to develop and sometimes nothing works. It
usually gets better around 3mos. Also, try the football hold
a while after feeding. Holding the baby upright after eating
also may help. Good luck.
BO
Some of the natural colic remedies also work for gas. I
recommend Hyland's homeopathic colic remedy or Gripe Water.
anon
Have you tried gripe water? It's a product well-known and long used in
England. I believe the main ingredient is fennel. You can purchase it
in
most specialty baby shops (Rockridge Kids, for one), and also in most
Indian food shops (I recently found it in a shop on San Pablo, near
45th,
across from Longs).
I found massaging, holding baby tummy down (either on thigh or arm,
with head on knee or hand), or baby on back and helping baby bring
knees in to tummy helped.
Also Been There
I strongly recommend Gripe Water, I tried it first time when our
son was 2 weeks old and has been using it since every day just
as a routine thing (he is now 11weeks). It's a mixture of ginger
and fennel and is designed to relief gas,stomach ache, hiccups
etc. I buy it at Day One baby store in SF but am sure that other
baby stores have it too, it's about $12 a bottle and each bottle
lasts for a couple of weeks (depends on how much and how often
you use it). I also did and do a lot of bycicle exercise when my
son has gas, it helps a lot. Hope this is helpful!
Marina
Simethicone drops were a lifesaver for my first child. She
suffered from gas all the time the first few months. We could
always count on crying right at 45 minutes after she ate, as
well as many other times. There is no known toxic does, and no
known drug interactions. I used the Wal-Mart private label
brand, because it was the cheapest - about $5 versus $14 for
the name brand, Mylicon. It is in with all the other stomach
remedies in the pharmacy section of most stores.
If you are breastfeeding, you should also consider eliminating
certain foods from your diet. I ate pumpkin bread with nutmeg
in it when my daughter was a month old, and she cried for three
days. There are articles available on what foods to try
eliminating first.
Tami
Our son suffered from gas pain, too, especially from 1-5 months
CGA (corrected gestational age for non-preemie parents). It
would be sporadic throughout the day. Our answer (with the
doctor's blessing) - Mylicon drops. They were miraculously
effective - working in about two minutes, actually. We continue
to use it for his now occasional gas (and he's 13 mos CGA).
Good luck!
Deborah
Oh, I feel for you! Those were tough days, but they do get
better. Everyone says 3-4 months, but often times it's more
like 5. Some tricks I've learned over the years: Lots of
pressure on the tummy (holding baby upright, fist pushed into
tummy). Don't be afraid to apply a little pressure, and bounce
about while doing it. Vibrations - they make babyseats,or clip-
on vibration makers that really work. The modern version of
putting your babyseat on the washing machine. Also, while I
knew that eating chocolate gave my baby gas, at the time I
didn't seem to be able to give it up. It is hard to figure out
what foods really affect the baby, but chocolate is a known
culprit, and other foods that give adults gas can be a problem
for baby as well. I've never heard that anyone has had luck
with the over-the-counter baby gas remedies. Good luck!
Eden
Hi,
My baby boy had terrible gas and stomach pain due to a
sensitivity to cow's milk proteins. Cow's milk proteins can
enter your breastmilk if you're breastfeeding, or are present in
many forumulas. I stopped eating all dairy foods when he was
around 1 mo. old and he was better within a few days. Within a
week or two he was like a new baby. What a relief!
Anon
hi, first of all, mylicon can help.
secondly, if you are nursing, they might have a reaction
to things you are eating. for me, it was dairy, oats,corn,
etc etc. it took a while to figure out. it went away when he
was 13 months old and now he loves milk, but it wasn't the lactose
but the whey that got to him and it helped to just drop it from my
diet.
good luck
Oct 2003
My one year has a lot of gas. It seems to really bother him.
He often wakes up in the middle of the night and we hear
him passing gas. Of course, then it takes us some time to
get him back to sleep. I thought it might be something he
eats but we haven't figured out what. We did cut back on
dairy, which seems to help a little. (We still haven't started
him on milk (he just turned 1) but he does get some yogurt,
cottage cheese etc.) We also just started using Mylcon
drops (sp?) but I don't know if it is really doing much. Does
anyone have any ideas on foods to avoid or any other
experience with gas? My husband and I are getting
desperate for a good nights sleep! Thanks.
anon
I have to recommend that you try cutting out dairy altogether. My
son had a hard time with dairy from birth - what was passed
through my breastmilk and later after 1, other dairy products. I
didn't believe it at first but eventually I stopped dairy and he
was a changed child. He had a lot of gas and many times it hurt
him so much he cried inconsolably. We gave him soy milk instead
and he did fine. At about 18 months we introduced dairy back into
his diet and he's fine with it. Apparently some kids have a
digestive system that matures a little later than others. My
suggestion is you switch to soy yoghurt, cut out dairy in his and
your (if you're still breastfeeding) diet for a couple of weeks.
You'll see a change very quickly if dairy is the culprit.
Good luck.
EAnnis
Try the food preparation techniques in Nourishing Traditions
by Sally Fallon. There are lots of tips for soaking beans and
nuts, and culturing dairy products to make them very
digestible. There are also tips on foods that increase your
digestive enzymes.
Gassiness is a feature of my son's genetic condition, but
with these techniques it's no longer a problem.
Good luck
EM
Your child may have celiac disease - it's not widely known but
fairly common. However, some feel one year old is too early to
test for this autoimmune disorder, because the immune system
does not mature until 5 yo. That is, a negative result might
not be meaningful, but a positive result certainly would be. In
any event, you should seriously consider having the blood tests
done before putting your child on a gluten-free diet, as once on
the diet the test results would definitely come back negative.
Another possibility is that your child has reflux (GERD) or milk
protein (casein) allergy. More obvious suggestions are to
eliminate gas-causing foods from your child's diet (kale foods
(cabbage, broccoli etc.), beans/lentils, lactose products, nuts,
spicy foods, high fiber foods).
sign me celiac
March 2003
My one year-old has recently started waking in the night with
gas pains and can't get back to sleep for an hour or more.
We've been tinkering with his supper (no dairy, a smaller
dinner, etc), but it seems to make no difference what or
when he eats: the first wake up is about 3 hours after he
falls asleep; often he wakes a few times more, and takes
quite a long time to settle back down (this all falls on my
husband, as I'm no longer nursing at night). Our
pediatrician thinks it's less what he eats than _how_ -- that
he gulps in air with his food and with the sippy cup -- but
had no better advice than to use Mylicon drops or gripe
water. The drops seem to help a bit, but I'd like advice on
preventing the problem entirely. Any ideas? Anybody gone
through similar problems with their almost-toddler?
Thanks!
caroline
Most people find that dairy needs to be eliminated for up to 6
weeks to see improvement. Alternately, you might consider IBS or
other intestinal issues. A ''cure'' for mine has been the Specific
Carbohydrate Diet http://www.scdiet.org
Kathy
my son had awful gas pains due to dairy in my diet until
about 14 months old. then all of a sudden he was fine!
apparently it does sometimes just need time, so perhaps
your child will also be fine with it soon.
i also had to eliminate oats, corn, and many other things,
and in solid food he couldn't tolerate oats, pears, plums,
corn, etc. as many baby foods have pear and plum juice in them
it took a while to track that one down.
also, simethicone drops really helped, as well as massaging his
stomach, cycling his legs, etc.
joanne
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