Caring for gassy infant – How to treat gas in infant

Here’s some tips on caring for gassy infants born from my trial by fire:

At the FIRST sign of gas – crying, squirming, passing very little gas after a lot of action… use neopeptine. I’d say, when in doubt, use neopeptine too.
Comfort baby. Cuddle in fetal position. This brings legs closer to stomach and naturally helps pass gas, while making the baby feel secure.
Feed baby. Babies tend to have bowel movements (or attempts) when feeding. The feeding comforts as well as helps them move the gas along.
Put some massage oil (coconut oil should be fine) on your hands and rub the tummy gently. G-e-n-t-l-y. You are not trying to squeeze the gas out. Just soothe and encourage movement.
Move the baby a lot. The squirming that is tiring your baby out is basically the baby moving to help pass gas. You can be a huge help to baby here. Rock, swing, exercise legs in bicycling motions, hold legs up like for a diaper change….. keep changing positions. The baby will not settle till the gas passes, so a position change is only temporary relief. Don’t let the infant get all worked up when it loses its effectiveness, move to a different position.
Of course, when a position soothes baby, hold it for longer, or move to something else quickly.
The end of the baby that gas is expected to exit has to be higher. Gas rises, remember? So, if your baby is moving his head restlessly, rocking back and forth, etc, hold him vertical, pat back, encourage burp. If he is squirming the whole body, drawing up legs and kicking them out, etc. Put horizontal and raise legs, cuddle in cradle hold, lightly rub small circles on lower back, etc.

These are things to do while your baby is suffering. If you are breastfeeding your infant, it might help to look into fore-milk hind-milk imbalance or lactose overload (NOT lactose intolerance), which I have written about earlier.

Tips to help baby crawl

Okay, so your baby is still not crawling. Maybe he’s 5 months old, or just born….. we are all eager to see them crawl.

Okay, the first thing to realize is that a newborn put on the mother’s stomach will crawl up to suckle (often, if not mostly). So crawling is not that big a difficulty. However, if you are talking about crawling to actually get somewhere significant…. you’re going to soon wish he was getting into less things, but hey, here are some tips anyway.

Put baby on stomach when awake. Really, there is no such thing as too much. Reassure, comfort, pick up, whatever, but if you’re putting the baby down awake, its the stomach that must be down. Really, a baby on the back is rather like a turtle on its shell. How will any crawling happen? Its definitely a learning by doing thing, and doing needs opportunity.
Be excited about it: Be thrilled by the fact that baby is on the stomach. Praise, laugh, get all thrilled, and chances are that baby will think its a good thing after all. A great tool if the baby is still undecided about how this stomach thing is.
Join your baby. On the floor. Yep. Go ahead, crawl yourself, and he may get some ideas.
Use toys and stuff. Your baby may not even seem to notice them, but they have. Babies are smart and quite curious about stuff. He may not seem to show interest initially, but leave him quiet for a bit, and he’ll get all curious about the toy and want to get it. This needs crawling of course.
Acknowledge efforts. Really, praise everything, even if baby has feet in the air. If he feels good about trying rather than feeling burdned by expectations he doesn’t understand, chances are that he’s going to want to spend time investigating this new experience.
Interpret – interpret everything as success.. If baby waves hands and feet, he’s going to end up moving in some direction or the other – fabulous. Cheer!

Use firm surfaces. A soft fluffy something is only going to bunch and absorb all baby’s efforts and discourage him.

Leave arms and feet (particularly) bare and cover torso. This will give more grip to the parts that will push, and more slipperiness to the parts that will slide and make movement easier. Basically, what we are doing is simply creating an opportunity for the baby to discover that moving his limbs on the floor ends up moving his body. Once he gets that, start reorganizing your home to get rid of all baby-non-proof things at floor level…..

Tips on teaching a baby to clap

Oooookay, I think we have cracked the clap code (though not actually clapped), which if you consider that Nisarg is not even 3 months yet, is pretty amazing.

The little guy has figured out that its all about swinging his hands together, but doesn’t yet have the co-ordination to quite make them meet….

If you want to teach your baby to clap, and he just stares back and blows spit bubbles at you, the following tips might help:

Don’t hurry. ENJOY the fun you are having with baby, no matter what it ends up as. Babies sense you enjoying yourself, and it tempts them to enter the action you are leading.
Pick your time. Don’t just pester the poor darling morning and night. The idea is to find a time when baby is alert, awake and quiet.
Talk baby talk with your baby. Get his attention. You want him really looking at you, observing.
Clap with an exaggerated movement (with an obvious swing of your hands). Laugh and share the joke with baby and do more baby talk.
Do this a couple of times, and baby will likely get buzzed enough to wave his hands. Get all excited about that, and clap some more and wait, as though you are fully expecting him to do the same. If baby doesn’t respond, fine. Do something else. Repeating clapping a couple of times, or playfully clapping his hands together will work as interactive fun, but don’t turn it into a lesson. It will not make him clap, if he stops enjoying it.

This is it. The whole session. Praise whatever swings baby makes, and clap in response. Eventually, the little darling is going to figure out how to make the hands meet when he swings them.

Neopeptine drops for infants with gas

Okay, like I said that the baby’s loose bowel motions got sorted by Bonnisan, the other helpful miracle we had with the gas was Neopeptine.

This is apparently something with digestive enzymes, and it really helps cut the amount of gas discomfort the baby goes through. Unfortunately, it took us a while to discover how to use it.

So, if you are using Neopeptine for infant gas, here are some tips, which we wish someone had given us:

You have likely been advised to give Neopeptine only for extreme colic, like we were. This makes you tend to wait for quite some time before the baby’s screaming forces you to use it. Don’t wait. Use it at the first sign of gas.
If your baby is suffering from gas, don’t give doses only when he is in pain. Give them for a day or two, as long as you aren’t giving him more than three times, though we have given him four or even five doses once on the first day, when he was in a lot of trouble.
Give the drops before feeding.
Neopeptine helps baby move the gas easier, but you can help it along. Give drops, burp, feed, burp, wait for some time, burp again.
Moving the baby’s legs will also help him pass gas, which will not hurt your situation.

Have you used Neopeptine? How did you use it? How was your experience?

Right brain development in infants

There is a wealth of information on right brain development in infants and how it can’t be started early enough and resources and all that. Like any other obsessed mother out there, I’m researching ways to entertain him in a manner that stimulates his development, and so far am doing pretty much exactly what came instinctively anyway.

Talking a lot to him, teasing him to win those smiles, carrying him around and showing stuff, making funny faces and exaggerated actions, etc.

The funny part is that the actions get him looking all solemn and puzzled at me when I’d have thought he’d laugh. He looks like he wants to ask “Hey, you okay? You seemed fine a minute ago”

What I’m planning to do:

Flash cards. He still sleeps most of the time, and seems supremely uninterested in the flashcards most of the time. So I guess this is going to be an acquired taste. At the moment, he’ll look at the cards very briefly and mostly look at my face as though trying to figure out what in the world I’m trying to do.
Touch: He gets his massage and bath every day, and we often cuddle at bedtime. Other than that, he loves touch in general. Stroke his head, body, face-but-NOT-nose, and he’s virtually purring. I give him lots of other stuff to touch too – the plastic of his toys – hard, soft, bags…, rubber mat, soft cotton swaddling cloth, other cloth materials, sponge, wood, …. whatever we can lay our hands on
Smell: So far, we like a couple of perfumes and sneeze at frying smells from the kitchen. Vicks , milk and baby powder are at the top.
Movement: I carry him around in my arms, in a sling…. lift him high, dance with him in my arms, … He pretty much enjoys it all indiscriminately
Mimicry: I do all kinds of stuff for him to copy. So far we have managed to stick our tongues out (both imitating me and when told), clap (sort of) and blink. He will suck instead of kiss, and we understand the sign for milk (I like to imagine), but can’t copy. I guess he’s too hungry and small to focus while hungry yet. Thing is, he enjoys all this stuff and is mostly waving arms and feet full power with that undecided half-smile on his face.
Music: He likes most music (other than a couple of really loud songs, and Anup Jalota) Favourites being nursery rhymes in Marathi, and Usha Uthups Karadi Rhymes followed closely by Shakti and Ghulam Ali.

And here I am, saying that I don’t get to do much because he sleeps so much. I guess its more about being aware of how much we are doing.

Communication Development at 7 weeks old?

I find myself communicating with Nisarg very easily. He is just 7 weeks old. If I have to look back and see what helped me the most, the single biggest thing was observation. Endless observation. Listening. Endless listening.

I found myself constantly putting myself in his shoes and trying to understand the context of his expressions and sounds. He is less than two months old, but I can confidently tell when he is hungry, tired, in pain, excited, scared, etc. Its less easy for him to understand me, but its clear that he understands a couple of things. The first is the most important – he can count on me. The second is more “provable”. He mimics me. He gets it clearly when I make a face and want him to imitate it. He will often attempt after I say “you try it” or similar.

He astounded his massage woman by consistently sticking his tongue out to say “bye” as she left, since she swaddled him and he can’t wave (not that he can if not swaddled). First couple of days, she and the mother in law thought it was coincidence – “babies stick their tongues out all the time”. Sure. But what if they stick it out after you have stuck yours out when they had their mouths firmly closed? We did it and showed, and we still show our tongue on demand. Will post a video.

So far, he will make an “o” with his lips, stick his tongue out, open his mouth wide (convenient for medicines), and tries but can’t wiggle his brows (he frowns).

On a more useful, but less fun vein, he will cry loudly in a certain way when he wants to pee, hold eye contact and make restless movements with his head to burp, and many other actions that I could write down and anyone can confirm. My husband called me when I’d gone to the shop saying that he was crying and wouldn’t stop – kicking out, arching, pulling up his knees…. was he hungry? What to do? Its a sign of his belief in my understanding Nisarg that he asked when I couldn’t really see or hear him. Just the description was enough. Poor baby had gas stuck. Told Raka to put him down, raise his legs and if that didn’t work, pick him, keep changing positions (from one hand to another, on lap, etc) but always horizontal and with legs in the fetal position.

Raka says the baby was relieved almost immediately. Another instance was when I was cooking and heard Nisarg cry. I yelled for Raka to get him to the wash basin for a pee immediately, and that was that.

And I have plans. Plans to help him share more of his world with me. I’m hoping to establish basic yes/no signals. No is easy, crying or frowning, but the yes can be tricky. He needs to realize that he can approve of something and I will pay attention. Well… maybe in a week or two….

Communication makes life much easier for both mother and child. And its not rocket science. All it takes is patience, experimentation and observation. So here is what you can do the next time your baby is telling you something you can’t understand:

Make a guess. You’d be surprised at how much you have noticed without noticing yourself noticing (couldn’t resist)
Respond based on that guess.
Observe your baby. What was the impact of your response? Did the original behaviour change? Become more specific? End? What happened?
More than the first behaviour and the new one, its the change and when it happened that’s the key.

For example, baby may be staring at your face. You respond by turning so that more light falls on your face. Baby may wave his hand in your direction – so your guess that he was “exploring your face” was correct. I sometimes even praise Nisarg for telling me so clearly when something really “clicks” because of this team work. Or, baby may whimper – okay, wrong guess – what could it be? Could he want something? You could ask him that and it becomes a response. Maybe he wanted attention and talk and he will quiet. Maybe he is hungry and will start crying louder when he sees you doing things, but not what he wants….

Soon, you get really quick with this.

This is the failsafe method for communication development with your baby. Even a couple of hours have the power to transform your relationship, and you don’t have to do anything drastically different from what you do.

Tips to increase intake and weight gain of breastfed baby

My son, as you all know is underweight and breastfed. Like any concerned mother, I want to see him put on weight consistently. This led me to really look for ways to up his intake and make the best of what he will eat. These insights were priceless and difficult to find on the net – took a lot of careful observation and experimenting.

The milk you feed him. Excess of foremilk and not enough hindmilk will cause gassiness. We know that – lactose overload or foremilk hindmilk imbalance. But why does getting enough hindmilk resolve this? Because hindmilk contains fats in addition to all that the regular stuff in the foremilk and the more the breast is empty, the more fats the milk will contain, making it travel slower through the intestines and get more time to be digested. So, if you have a good milk supply, pump off foremilk and then put the baby to breast. This way, what little quantity the baby drinks will have more calories in it, in addition to saving energy spent in gas pain, fussiness, etc.
Feed at first cues of hunger. Okay, so we can’t always recognize them… Really, when in doubt, offer. When your baby starts following you with his eyes, offer. When baby has been awake for a while since previous feed, offer. If its hot weather and he could be thirsty…. Whatever. Offer. I was really surprised to see how much more than “every two hours” my baby would want to eat. If you catch the hunger before it reaches desperation and fussiness levels, your baby will be that much calmer and eat more.
Don’t stop feeding when your baby takes a break. Often my son will stop drinking because he wants to burp or poop or pee. Getting that done will see him drinking again, if I offer, but he’s not hungry enough to fuss. (He will look at me constantly or stare at my breast though). After burping always offer to continue feeding if baby wants. If you miss this, he’ll just end up asking that much sooner, or god forbid, if you are a time table mom or don’t figure out he’s hungry, he’ll go partially hungry.
Sometimes the baby plays with the nipple, rubs head against breast, arches back alternating with mouthing the nipple, cries, etc. He is NOT refusing milk. He is hungry, but is uncomfortable and can’t focus on it. Most of the time, burping will do the trick, or try calming him, waiting for a poop, helping him release gas. Whether it works to resolve the discomfort or not, sometimes you manage to help enough that he can now drink comfortably.
Don’t soothe a hungry baby when you could feed him. Won’t work for long anyway, and aren’t you trying to increase his growth? Hunger is an opportunity. Even if it means he is eating all the time. If he is constantly asking to feed, obviously he is constantly feeling hungry. Don’t analyse it – “how could he be hungry again so fast?” etc – obviously he is. How doesn’t matter. Could be because he didn’t feed enough last time, or burped after that and now has more space or a growth spurt, or whim/weather…? Sometimes Nisarg will eat almost all the time, and when he settles again, his meals will have increased in size – a growth spurt in appetite?

These tips together probably doubled my son’s intake within a couple of weeks and kept the good doctor beaming in approval though his weight is still off the charts low.

Supporting an infant's neck

You look at that fragile little thing and your heart flutters with fear for its safety. You are so scared of jerking that flimsy neck supporting that big head, that you take a full minute before the baby transfers from the bed to your arms.

Well…. Life has a way of enforcing efficiency, as has confidence and observation. Trust me, I learned, and then had conversations with the doctor, other experienced people….

The first sign you get that you may be being too careful with the infant’s nect is when you want to snatch your baby back from the doctor when s/he handles him. Fact is, most infants are able to take movement of the neck comfortably. What you want is to avoid jerks, head dropping from gravity, and such horrible things.

Most of the time, if you are picking up your baby with a hand under its head, you are already doing things right. If you are supporting it in the crook of your arm, that works too, as do many other ways.

Most people will advise you to be super careful, under the belief that better safe than sorry. However, it doesn’t help if you fear damaging your child for life each time you pick him or her up. Babies will move their heads at will and often correct uncomfortable head positions themselves. Sometimes they will nod their heads to angles beyond what they are able to control, and the head will suddenly flop.

My technique is to keep my arm/hand or other body part or soft surface loosely and attentively ready to “catch” the head if it tries to go more than the baby’s usual range of movement. However, I don’t see the sense in immobilizing my son so much that he strengthens his neck through fighting restraints rather than attempting normal movement. This has gotten me grief from my mother-in-law who always holds him like he’s strapped to a splint. However, it hasn’t even earned me a whimper of discomfort from my son.

I don’t think nature ever intended us to keep our offspring unnaturally rigid till some predecided date when they miraculously started not needing support. Nisarg learns to hold his neck every day and keeps getting better at it. He can now raise his head easily when sleeping on his tummy, turns to look in every direction, and will often rub his forehead on my chest or bang his head on my breast himself. He doesn’t seem to have suffered from the wear and tear.

If you are still trying to figure out how and how much to support your infant’s neck:

provide support under neck and head for all horizontal positions, but it is not necessary to restrict any voluntary movement.
Provide support underneath for diagonal positions and be attentive for baby’s movements moving head to positions he can’t control or recover from and and situations where gravity could tax the neck muscles and cause the head to drop. This includes pulling into sitting positions for example
When holding baby upright, there is no real need to keep holding head, though positioning him so that he can rest on your chest or shoulder and keeping one hand on is a good idea. Don’t “hold”, just keep it there for comfort and readiness.

How to play with a newborn

I read a lot about the importance of play in the growth and development of a baby. However, there was little I found on when to begin and how to go about it with a newborn baby.

Of course, like any other parent, I was eager to “test drive” my brand new son. Unfortunately, said son had other ideas. He was hopelessly unable to smile, make interesting sounds or move in any way that could lead to playing. Now what. Here are some tips fom experience and what little information I could find.

Forget about “training” baby to do anything. Doesn’t work. The idea is to train yourself to do stuff he can relate with or find interesting.
Singing: This guy knows my voice and he loves to listen to it. Singing makes him look intently at me if I’m close, or in my direction if he can’t focus on me.
Chatter: Talk to him. Doesn’t matter what. Stocks will work, as will romance or fairy tales and chemistry equations. Just keep your tone relaxed and go on.
Cuddle: You will love this and so will your loved one.
Don’t expect enjoyment to mean smiles. If it ain’t crying or avoiding looking at you, its good with what you’re at.
Hand holding: Give him a finger to hold… or not. Whatever. Don’t expect too much every time your finger is offered.
Be brief: Conclude while its good. Everything is new to the baby, so your efforts could just end up tiring it out. begin when he seeks eye contact, and stop after a while (particularly with talking while looking at his eyes). No limits to cuddling though.

Sunlight for newborn jaundice

Blue light has long been accepted as a way of treating jaundice. This treatment came about through the observations of a very smart nurse who observed that babies near windows had less problems with jaundice, which led to research…..

Another separate study assessed the use of sunlight (which is abundant) as compared with the special blue lights (less available in resource poor regions in the middle east) and found that it works just fine and in fact better, though I guess medical facilities would prefer to avoid risks of sunburn or infection for severely jaundiced babies.

Here is what to do if your baby is mildly yellow.

Figure out a place where the baby can enjoy sunlight. This may be near a window, balcony, or, like in our case, the terrace of our building.
Morning or evening light is what you want. Day is too harsh for baby. Morning is better if you live in the city – less pollution.
If you are at home, lucky you. If like me, you head out, prepare well.
You will want to expose the most skin, but protect the eyes. If you have special dark glasses like in the hospital, great. If not, creating shade for the eyes works well, particularly if you are careful about timing. This can even be in the form of a cap or bonnet.
Stuff you want to take along, or keep handy. A mat to lie on, some means of protecting eyes and ideally, some way to create a darker area in the direction the baby is facing.
I take along a tent-like mosquito net, which I used to place over the baby and drape a dark cloth on the side opposite to where the sun rays hit. Then I used to place the baby inside with his head toward the sun, so that he had a nice dark area where he was looking.
Careful placing of the shade for the eyes, and this dark area worked well to protect his eyes so that he wasn’t squinting while still allowing him to sunbathe.
Duration is important. 5-10 minutes is good. You don’t want to cook the baby. 5 minutes or less on his back and similar on his tummy should do the trick.
Watch baby carefully. My baby loves this time. He used to “unfurl” from his preferred curled up posture and really stretch out when the sun rays hit him. Watering eyes, squinting, fussiness should prompt you to immediately pay attention to protecting his eyes.
Do this for a couple of days till the yellowness goes away.

Please note that I’m not a doctor, and this is not medical advice. I am simply sharing suggestions based on what I did. Might be a good idea to bounce this off your doctor first before trying it out.

Nisarga

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