Do big tummy troubles cause colic?

Indigestion – Are garlic and onions risky for your baby or the spices of life?

To most people, the advice that breast-feeding moms pass up garlic, onions and beans, seems reasonable. After all, we know that many of these things can make us gassy. The trouble is that even this reasonable advice gets confusing the more you think about it. For example, if gassy foods are hard on a baby’s tummy, how can breast-feeding moms in Mexico eat frijoles (beans) and those in Korea munch kim chee (garlic-pickled cabbage), without their babies ever letting out a peep?

Nevertheless, I think it’s reasonable for the mother of an irritable baby to avoid “problem” foods (citrus, strawberries, tomatoes beans, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, peppers, onion, garlic) for a few days to see if she cries less. However, in my experience only a handful of infants improve when these foods are eliminated.

Most babies can tolerate anything in their mom’s diet, except medicines, caffeine and alcohol. Studies even show that babies love tasting a smorgasbord of flavors. So, don’t be surprised if your little one sucks on your breast more heartily after you’ve had a plate of lasagna loaded with garlic!

Food Allergies – Why couldn’t babies with allergies just sneeze…instead of scream?

BesideS giving infants indigestion, food can trigger true allergic reactions. Allergies are part of our immune system, protecting us from unfamiliar proteins (like inhaled pollen or cat dander) that try to enter our bodies.

As a rule, if you have an allergic reaction you’ll sneeze because the fight between your body and the allergens typically takes place in your nose. With young children, however, the battleground between their bodies’ immune system and the foreign protein is usually lower down, in the intestines.

Early in life, your baby’s intestine is not fully developed. Her immature intestinal lining allows large, allergy-triggering molecules to enter her blood stream like flies zipping through a torn screen door. As she gets older, those holes get smaller and smaller until the intestinal lining becomes an almost perfect barrier to these undigested protein intruders (usually by about your baby’s first birthday).

For many years, doctors believed that babies could even be allergic to their own mother’s milk. But in 1983, Swedish scientists proved this to be impossible. They demonstrated that babies whose colic improved when they were taken off of their mother’s milk were sensitive not to their mom’s milk itself but to traces of cow’s milk that had floated across the lining of their mother’s intestines and snuck into her milk.

Please don’t be overly concerned about your diet troubling your child. While it’s true that foods can zoom from your intestine through your milk and into your baby, that’s usually a good thing. This transfer gets your baby’s tongue in tune with your family’s favorite foods.

Unfortunately, babies rarely do develop allergies to foods their moms eat. Infants can become allergic to almost any food from soup to nuts; however, cow’s milk is certainly the most troublesome protein that babies have to deal with. It is the proverbial 800-pound gorilla of baby allergies. That having been said, soy comes in at a not too distant second place. In fact, 25% of babies who are milk allergic are soy allergic as well.

I tell my patients it should come as no surprise that some babies develop an allergic reaction to cow’s milk. After all, this food was never really intended for our babies’ mouths. It’s a food lovingly made by cows for their own babies, which we then sneak away from them to feed to our hungry tots.

Stimulant food – Is your baby on a caffeine jag?

Some babies are super-sensitive. They jump when the phone rings and cry when they smell a strong perfume. So, it should come as no surprise that some babies also get hyper from caffeine (coffee, tea, cola or chocolate) or from stimulant medicines (diet pills, decongestants, and certain Chinese herbs) in their mom’s milk.

Unlike many babies who are unfazed when their mothers drink 1-2 cups of coffee, even that small amount of caffeine can rev a sensitive baby up into the “red zone”. The caffeine collects in a woman’s breast milk over 4-6 hours. And, within an hour of drinking this “lait-au-café,” her baby can begin getting irritable and unhappy.

An anecdote from one of my patients: Everything was going great with Lucas until he turned 10 days old. Out of the blue, he had 2 terrible days of shrieking from 5PM-12MN. His mother Liz said, “The only thing that would get him to quiet was to hook him up to the breast. When he sucked, he was like a wino who hadn’t had a drink in weeks. He quickly calmed and fell asleep. However, as soon as I tried to ease him off the boob…he wailed!”

Then, an idea flashed in Liz’s head, “Oh my God! Maybe it’s the coffee!” On each of those 2 tumultuous days, Liz had downed a couple of cups of regular coffee with her lunch. Thankfully, when Liz cut out the coffee, Lucas turned into her little lamb again.

One day, however, Liz awoke at 5AM with a splitting headache. She took Tylenol, but she knew the one thing that would really help her was…coffee. So, Liz brewed herself a cup and held her breath. Lucas was sweet and calm all morning long, but sure enough, at 2PM (8 hours later) he was as wild as a werewolf!

Lactose Intolerance – Can babies get stomach pains from lactose…like adults do?

You, or someone you know, may well get gassy stomachaches or diarrhea after eating dairy products. Over the past few decades, doctors have discovered that 15% of US adults have trouble digesting lactose (the sugar in dairy products). This realization led researchers to wonder if crying babies should also avoid lactose.

However, infants are not miniature adults. Just because older people can get cramps from lactose doesn’t mean that babies can. Lactose makes up 40% all the calories that a baby consumes during the first 6 months of life. And lactose isn’t some kind of baby junk food. It’s highly nutritious: It boosts the percentage of calcium a baby’s intestine extracts from milk, and helps the immune system of breast-fed babies by encouraging the growth of lactobacillus in their intestines.

Stomach Acid Reflux – Do colicky babies cry from “heartburn”?

The most recent adult disease pediatricians have considered as colic cause is stomach acid reflux (also known Gastro-Esophageal Reflux or GER). This is a condition where acidic stomach juices squirt up, towards the mouth, irritating everything they touch. GER has been proven to cause heartburn in adults so it was reasonable to investigate if it could do the same in babies.

Now, a little reflux is nothing new; in fact, most babies have it. We just call it by a different name: spit up. It turns out that the muscle that keeps the stomach contents from moving “upstream” is weak in most babies. So a bit of your baby’s last meal can easily sneak back out when she burps or grunts, especially if she was overfed or swallowed a lot of air.

But when should you suspect reflux as the cause of your baby’s unhappiness? Here are a few telltale signs:

* She vomits more than 5 times a day and more than an ounce each time.
* Her crying occurs with most meals, during the day and night.
* She often wails right after a burp or a spit-up.
* The bouts of crying are no better, or worse, by the time she’s 3-months-old.
* She may have episodes of back arching; hoarseness; wheezing; choking; and/or excessive and even painful hiccupping.

Tags: Colic