MASSAGE TO RELIEVE TRAPPED WIND

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Since your newborn’s digestive system is still not fully developed in the first few weeks, breastfeeding starts up his system and he poops some time after starting to breastfeed. The intestines carry out their emptying function quickly and noisily in order to open space for the new coming food. This is why in the first few weeks your baby should be breastfed whenever he wants. Whereas if you change his diapers first and then start breastfeeding, he’ll get nervous and start crying and his bad temper will continue when he is held to the breast and experiences difficulty in feeding. You won’t experience very serious trapped wind in your baby in the first weeks.

However one evening, sometimes perhaps in the first week, sometimes on the tenth or maybe on the twentieth day, your baby’s restlessness will increase, his mouth will constantly be wanting to suck and he’ll surprise you by pulling his knees to his stomach and screaming nervously. Even if he was only fed 15 minutes ago, most moms take baby to the breast because he seems to be asking for it and going for the nipple, pulling on it desperately, but then baby starts having a crying fit two minutes later. The only motion baby knows to sooth himself in this world is sucking; even if he’s full he’s still going to suck. In such instances the spasm occurring due to gas being squeezed in his intestines pains him and he wants to comfort himself by sucking, but the pain that continues while he sucks makes him nervous and he continues crying. Those days when baby wishes to be nursed and is crying and screaming while stopping breastfeeding nervously make many moms think their babies are crying because they don’t have milk and fall into the trap of trying to give formula to the poor baby struggling with gas spasms. They sometimes even go to the family doctor thinking that something terrible is happening to their baby. You often hear people say, “We were just saying how calm the baby was and now we’ve jinxed it!”

Trapped wind in babies is an inevitable situation. This is due to the fact that they cannot move their bodies and are continuously lying down, consume only liquids, their digestive organs are developing, digestive bacteria is growing, and on top of this, they swallow air while sucking. Even if most of the air swallowed comes out when he is burped by being tapped on the back, in spite of this, small air bubbles that pass into the intestines combine with the movements of the intestines towards the evening and transform into big air bubbles getting stuck at some point in the intestines. The gas that gets squeezed as a result of the intestine’s peristaltic movements causes severe spasms. Giving medicine or tea to your baby may result in temporary comfort, but isn’t the solution. That air bubble that is causing the spasm has to be dissipated and dispersed and thrown out of the body. A massage to relieve trapped wind will help reduce your baby’s gas spasms and get rid of those big bubbles throughout the period when he is having spasms and difficulty pooping.

A demo of this massage will be given, together with an explanation.