Gas in Babies

Archived Q&A and Reviews

Gas pain relief for 1-mo-old baby

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. 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

One-year-old has a lot of gas

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

One-year-old waking up at night with gas

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 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