Infant Tears

So yesterday we had one of those sad milestones for an infant. I wasn't nearly fast enough preparing a bottle yesterday as Sherri was away for a while. She did leave plenty of her breastmilk just in case.

Nate was crying and as I was trying to comfort him I noticed tears streaming down his face. We had not seen tears fro him and while they are not something I want to see it does tell us that his tear ducts are working properly and are not blocked.

Infants tear ducts seem to be capable of producing tears in the first month. Typically by 2-3 months infants will see tears. Some infants have blocked tear ducts which may mean no tears for many more months. In almost all cases,i the tear ducts will take care of themselves over time. There are cases in which more drastic measures may be taken to deal with blocked tear ducts, but looks like we are certainly in the clear. Now we just have to deal with the sadness of tears when Nate cries.

Baby Got Gas

Nate has gas. Of late, especially at night, it has been pretty bad. We don't know how much it really hurts him, but the grunts and cries certainly keep everyone up. We've been trying to figure out what is behind Nate's gas.

Here are some of the common potential causes for a breastfed baby: immature digestive tract, gas bubbles entering through crying, eating, and sucking on pacifier (what comes in must go out), foods mom may have eaten, and foremilk/hindmilk imbalance. The list could be longer, but this seems pretty long for us. The good thing is Nate doesn't really seem to have colic, just bad case of gas. They may be rather similar, but from the descriptions I'm glad colic hasn't struck.

We've tried to burp and massage Nate a lot. That alone doesn't seem to have solved anything. From our reaching simethicone (mylicon) usually isn't very effective. We've tried some gripe water and it may have helped, but it is really hard to tell. We've looked at probiotics to help out his digestive system. No idea if that will do any good. I'm convinced that the foods mom eat make almost no impact on gas. Then Sherri is going to make some adjustments to try and reduce what Nate sees of the heavy letdown.

One thing that at least seems to help Nate feel better is to move his legs like he is bicycling. That usually seems to make him feel better and the cycling is often followed by letting out gas.

Hopefully all this will be behind us soon. Unfortunately a lot of the gas issues may just take time to work out on their own. One of the better sources (kellymom.com) that I've found on many baby topics lends weight to the argument that time may be the most effective. More at http://www.kellymom.com/babyconcerns/gassybaby.html.

So we'll have a few more nights to deal with gas and lots more bicycle movements to come for sure.