Babies swallow much air when crying and get gas pains as a result. Sometimes they obtain gas by sucking too hard while taking a bottle or if the bottle contains too much air. Gas may present with a slightly distended abdomen and the baby pulling up her/his legs. Rarely is the formula or breast milk itself a source of gas.
Remedies for gas include:
- Improved burping techniques. Burp in the middle of a feed. Place the baby’s abdomen on your breast bone or shoulder and gently compress the whole back to get a better burp.
- In general make sure the breast feeding baby who is gassy doesn’t stay on the breast more than 20 minutes at a time (10 minutes of good sucking per side is all that is needed). Babies engaged in long periods of non-nutritive sucking may be swallowing more air from around the nipple. In the same way if a bottle nipple is dripping too slowly (less than one drop per second - turn the bottle over before feeding to count) a baby may suck too hard and swallow more air. In this case you may have to increase the flow of the formula by moving up from a small to a medium flow nipple or increasing the size of your current nipple with a small skewer stick.
- Mylicon drops may also take the edge off the irritability from gas. (0.3 cc after meals and at bedtime)