Saturday, March 7, 2009

Help?

On behalf of an anonymous yet obvious BFF, I request the assistance of all of you who have had dealings with infants:

How do you make the screaming stop when the gas drops haven't helped much and the gassy colicky fussing just won't end?

4 comments:

Stacey said...

Well, I handled those situations with a combination of praying to God for deafness and telling myself I'd schedule a tubal ligation in the morning.

If the baby's not hungry and gas drops ain't helping, walking up and down the hallway while singing is basically the only thing that'll help. Make sure the baby's legs are bent up against the stomach; it's prime farting position. Also, lay her on her back on a bed and move her legs like she's riding a bicycle - it tends to move the fart down a little, too.

Nicole Bradshaw said...

Well, honestly, sometimes there's no way to stop the madness.

We did what we called "knees to the tummy" a whole, WHOLE lot. We'd lie booger on his back and then press his knees to his tummy, stretch them back out, and press them back in at a variety of angles. We made up a song to go with the movements, and we sang it and did this ALL. THE. TIME.

Good luck. Sometimes, all you can do is put the little screamer in the crib and walk away for 15 minutes of reclaimed sanity before starting all over again.

Supermom said...

warm water on the tummy seemed to help Superkid. But I agree with Nicole sometimes there is nothing you can do. And when I was faced with that; I just cried out loud with him.

Anonymous said...

OK, so late with the comment, but a couple of things that have helped us in the last few weeks (in addition to the stuff above, which are all good suggestions)...

1) half a dose of gripe water right after feeding. Not the gas drop stuff mind you, the fennel and ginger stuff they sell at walgreens (I like the organic one w/o the baking soda in it and it seems to work really well).

2) if your going to be walking the baby up and down the hallway anyway, there are two other holds I found really helped my little girl. One was to hold her like a football, tummy down against my arm, with her face resting in my hand. This kept a little pressure on her tummy and seemed to relieve the ache just a little bit (my ped. called this the "gas hold"). The other was to hold her high on my shoulder (just a bit higher than I normally would to burp her) so that her tummy was basically right at my collar bone.

And following up on what supermom said, my little ones favorite place to let it out? A warm bath. Works wonders for relaxing her enough to just let it go.