When Eating is Hard

Once my milk finally came in, I thought breastfeeding would get easier.  It didn't.

What follows is not specific to breastfeeding, though; it's my impression this happens to many babies, regardless of how they're fed.

So, Thumper was a few weeks old when feeding time became an absolute nightmare.  He clearly had gas; about midway through a feeding he'd start to cry.  Sometimes he'd arch his back.

Here's what I did:  I burped him constantly.  I bicycled his legs.  I massaged him.  I tried gas drops, and gripe water, and probiotics drops (not at the same time).  With the possible exception of the probiotic drops, nothing helped.  I was exhausted after every feeding because I was constantly moving: burping, turning him this way and that.  A while after he appeared to be done eating he'd calm down.  Sometimes night feedings were better, but he was still crying.

Naturally, the first place I turned was Google - not just Dr. Google, but the crowdsourcing of countless forums, anything I could find that sounded similar to what he was doing.  I also asked his doctor about it, at more than one appointment.

The advice I got and found can fit into a few groups.  From the doctors, and sources with background and training in such matters, I heard: his system is probably immature.  Nothing appears to be physically wrong.  Give him a few months and he'll outgrow it, probably by six months.  You can try the drops/gripe water/probiotics, and they probably won't help but they won't hurt.

From the forums of mothers, this is without exception the first comment I would see: It's probably an intolerance to something you're eating.  Cut out dairy, then everything else.  I always knew when I ate something wrong because the results were immediate.  If you're on formula, switch to something that isn't dairy first, then go from there.

Other tidbits I heard on the elimination diet front: It'll take a few weeks for every trace to leave your system; you might have to cut out anything from strawberries to gluten to sugar to caffeine, giving a few weeks to check for results each time.  Once you get everything, though, he'll be a different baby.  Oh, and it's not forever; most of these "intolerances" go away by six months.

There were also those who said it was likely reflux, and their baby was on a medication for it.  Besides frequent burping and holding upright, which I was already doing, most of the home remedies involved having the babies sleep on an incline.  Between the newborn napper of our Pack'n'Play and his Rock'n'Play, he was already on an incline most of the time anyway.  Actually diagnosing reflux is pretty invasive; it would appear most doctors just prescribe the meds to try out.

Then there were those who claimed all the issues were related to foremilk/hindmilk imbalance, or maybe oversupply.  I became convinced I had this problem, though in retrospect I'm not sure if I did. Regardless, I switched to feeding him on one side only at a time.  He didn't seem hungry, but he didn't seem any better, either.

Here's the thing: when your child visibly looks like they're in pain, you'll be willing to try pretty much anything to make it go away.  Double that when you're sleep-deprived in those first few weeks of hormonal hell.  When Thumper slept, instead of sleeping myself I went back over the same pages and searches, trying to find the situation that fit just right, find the solution.

Even asking my mom for advice wasn't very useful.  "In my day they'd say, 'What did you eat?'" she said.  She didn't seem to be familiar with anything I described.  "He's crying in the middle of the feed?  Oh, my," she said.  "Yes, feeding him is miserable.  It's not some magical bonding experience, trust me," I replied.  I'd read about women nursing their bouncing babies to sleep, and feel jealous.

Even in my fog, though, some of these anecdotes seemed a little fishy.  Everyone has a baby with a food intolerance?  Everyone had to eliminate a litany of products but their baby got better right around the time their system would be maturing anyway?

One of the most helpful pages was this one from KellyMom.  It confirmed a lot of what I'd read about dairy staying in the system for weeks, but more helpfully, included a list of actual symptoms for babies with intolerance.  With the possible exception of the occasional (bloodless) green stool, and the fussiness,  Thumper didn't really have the signs of a food intolerance.  Plus I had the assurance of his doctor that nothing was visibly wrong.  So I did something that was actually really difficult: nothing.

I didn't eliminate every food I was eating.  I did stick with the probiotic drops for a little while, just in case, and of course I kept up with the bicycling and burping and whatnot.  At first I still went to Google at every nap, still searching for that magic answer.  Eventually the Yeti reminded me that I wasn't going to find anything, and the most likely answer was time.  It was hard to break the habit, though, especially after a particularly tough feeding.

And here's what happened: he got better.  Just before the three-month mark, he got notably better.  He actually was falling asleep after eating on occasion.  Even better, eating was no longer a time for crying.

He got bigger, and calmer.  Now he's just over four months, and would probably drift off after eating about half the time, if circumstances allowed.  I'll feed him on one side most of the time, but I always offer both sides, and he'll take both also about half the time.  Burping is minimal; recently he's started waving his arm in the middle of a feed, which I've been interpreting as a need to sit up and take a break (usually burp).

Sometimes I'm clearly just a food source.  Sometimes any sound is far more interesting than milk, and he'll look around at the slightest thing that grabs his attention.  But sometimes, feeding my baby really does feel like a bonding moment - and it almost always feels relaxing these days.

It just felt like when I was trying to find an answer, I never found the accounts of parents who said, "He just grew out of it."  Just the other day, I saw a distant acquaintance asking about this very issue on Facebook.  Three guesses what advice she got.

This is not to say that food intolerances don't exist; I just think they're also accompanied with more physical evidence, and maybe not quite as common as we're led to believe.  So I'm just adding my story to the cacophony of personal anecdotes, to say it is entirely possible a baby can just grow into their stomach.

I think Thumper would agree with me.