The crying of a baby tells us many things because it is the only way he has to let us know that he is not at ease and that he needs us. He tells us that he is hungry, sleepy, cold, hot, that he feels helpless and wants to be with us and sometimes he also tells us that he is very saturated and can no longer (what it seems like are baby colic) or that his belly hurts or something bothers him.
What hurts his belly is what we end up assuming dads, because the baby arches, it turns very red as if trying to poop and, nevertheless, does not succeed. Then we take them in the arms, in the anti-colic position and it seems to calm down completely, or just for a while, but sometimes it does not help and the crying episodes go on and on and our despair increases and increases. What is the anti-colic position? Why does your belly hurt? What can we do? Let's see it.
The anti-colic position
I don't know if it's really called that, but it's a position that babies really like because with her we hold the belly, we produce some pressure on it and it seems that it helps them with cramps and gases. It is a position that parents like very much because this way we can carry them safely with one hand.
Here, in the photo, you see the baby totally relaxed on his father's arm. The variant that offers more autonomy to parents is to place the baby's back against our belly and take it, in reality, with the other hand, that of the arm that is where the baby's head is. So with just one arm we hold the head, which is in the fold of the arm and forearm and the hand reaches its groin, where we end up accompanying the support.
In Babies and more Infant colic: how to help you stop cryingWhy does your belly hurt?
This is the one million question. The first thing you should know is if your belly really hurts, because many times it seems so, but in reality what they are is stressed, overwhelmed. It has always been said that the colic of the sunset and dusk were due to discomfort in the belly, but I always say that if so, They would also cry in the morning, at noon and / or at night. That crying almost always in the afternoon, almost always at the same time, is too suspicious and sounds more like that stress that I comment, to the fatigue of the whole day, of all the stimuli received (voices, smells, sensations to the touch, noises , etc.), who still do not understand and do not know how to manage, and there comes a point where their immature brains "explode" in tears.
But well, let's say yes, their stomach hurts. We see that they cry, that they arch, that they turn red, that they are trying to poop (it seems) and they don't get it. If they only do it from time to time, coinciding with the fact that they have not been pooping for a few hours or more, it is clear, they want to release what they have inside but they do not succeed.
This is for immaturity, for not being able to squeeze to poop and relax the sphincter at the same time. If when they poop, it is liquid or semi-liquid with lumps, the difficulty of doing it is not in the texture of the poop, but in its inability to tighten and "open the culillo". "So much scandal, so much crying and so much squeezing to then make the liquid poop," say many parents who expect, after the number, a big ball. Well, that, as time passes and the baby is a little older, it will be resolved.
It may also be that your belly hurts by gases, because when they eat they swallow air. If the baby takes the breast, it is necessary to evaluate the taking and make sure that when breast does not click, that is, that air is not entering between the mouth and the chest. If it does, the grip is incorrect and must be fixed, and in the meantime always put the baby to burp, it will have swallowed a lot of air.
If it does not click, if it seals the mouth well with the chest, it is not usually necessary to burp because it has not swallowed air, although in reality it depends a little on the baby. There are babies who suck perfectly and, for whatever reason, they have air that they then throw with a burp at the end of the shot (sometimes it is air that they swallowed when they cried when they asked for the breast, because mom has arrived late).
In Babies and more My baby has gas, what can I do?Another possible reason that your belly hurts is lactose. Sometimes it can happen that the baby breast of one breast and that, before finishing the shot, the mother changes it to the other breast. This is common when following indications of the type "10 minutes in each breast", because the baby is removed from the breast when he has taken the milk from the beginning of the intake, richer in lactose and proteins, and placed on the other breast to take more milk from the beginning instead of the milk from the end of the first breast, where there was less lactose and more fat and calories. Lactose has to be digested by the action of a digestive enzyme called lactase, and if too much lactose arrives and lactase is not able to break it down all, there may be abdominal discomfort (what happens to lactose intolerant when they take it).
It may also be that the baby has a tummy ache for being lactose intolerant or having an allergy to cow's milk protein. If the baby is breastfed, many of the things his mother eats become part of breast milk and it is common for a baby to cry when breastfeeding, or when it ends, because of some food the mother eats. The most common, although not the only one, is cow's milk. If the baby feels bad about any component of cow's milk, even if he doesn't drink it, he will be bothered by the amount that comes through the mother's milk.
In the event that the baby drinks artificial milk the same thing can happen, the baby formulas come from cow's milk, so, although modified, in case of protein allergy or in case of lactose intolerance, will cry when drinking normal formula milk, for the tummy ache it produces.
What to do in case the baby has a bellyache?
Well, first try find the cause. If crying is only when you want to poop, you can't do much more than wait for it to grow a little, mature and master the issue of squeezing and relaxing the sphincter. If you cry because the poop is hard, then you will have to work on that, looking for the cause of constipation and possible remedies.
In case the crying is due to gas, what has been said, try to make it right in the chest, breastfeed before it cries, if it can be, and in case we see that it has air anyway, favor it belching If you take a bottle, look for one with a valve so that the air is up and not in the part of the nipple, to prevent the baby from swallowing air.
In case we suspect that you take too much lactose from breast milk, the ideal is to forget the clock and stop controlling the time that the baby breast of each breast. Let him take one breast until he leans back, or if we notice that he doesn't take it out, then give him the other.
If everything seems to come from something the mother eats, then start thinking what it can be, in case we find the pattern (sometimes it is not milk and it is the peach, or the lentils, or the banana, or go to know). If we do not find it, try to discard cow's milk, which is usually what feels bad. This is done completely eliminating dairy. No milk, no yogurt, no cheese or anything that contains cow's milk protein in its composition. Come on, you have to look at the ingredients of everything and not eat anything that carries milk. Nothing at all, because if the mother drinks a little and the baby cries, she will no longer know if she cries for that little bit or because she cries for another cause.
In Babies and more, the stomach always hurts: functional abdominal pain in childrenOnce all dairy products are removed, wait a week, for example, to notice the change in the baby. If he keeps crying, well that's not it. If you stop crying, then you have to take dairy again, the ones that the mother wants, without restriction, to see if the baby complains again and cry (because it could be that when she leaves the milk she stops crying, but that when she returns to taking it will not get worse and then the improvement is not due to the absence of milk in the mother's diet).
And if none of this works, then we will have to talk to the pediatrician in case the baby cries for something else. An intolerance, that has reflux and digestive acids bother you in the esophagus, which is a matter of character or way of being, that you drink artificial milk, whose digestions are heavier than breast milk, and that you are giving more than that fits him, that he has a urine infection that makes him increasingly irritable or so many other things that can make a baby cry.
Sometimes the days and weeks pass and one day they stop crying so much. This is how babies are, that is how they suffer and that is how parents suffer trying to be their best giving, often, blind sticks in search of the cause, that which we sometimes do not even find.
Photos | Thinkstock
In Babies and more | Soothe the pain of the newborn, How to calm the crying of the baby
