# Newborn vomit/fussy nursing session



## dex_millie (Oct 19, 2006)

Hi moms I am new to this forum and a first time mom. I have a question about my 3 week 5day newborn. About once a day may for about an hour maybe two he has this fussy time - he makes cry sound while nursing, sometimes pulling off and latching back on other times just staying attached. Now and then he does this little scream. He seems to suck more and be less patient. Then when I go to burp him, he vomits what seem all the milk he drank (he proberly vomits 2 or 3 times during that fussy session). Sometimes I wonder if he is just eating too much. He doesn't vomit thoughout the rest of the day - maybe might do it once or if he wasn't burp properly and we lay him down to do a diaper change. Just wanted to know if anyone has any experience with this and if have any suggestions. FYI he is gaining weight fine so far - he is in the 75 percentile for weight and height.

P.S. If you have any experience with baby acne too I'd like to know if you did anything to clear it up.

Thanks moms


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## blsilva (Jul 31, 2006)

Hello! Congratulations on your newborn. I'm wondering, is your ds actually vomiting- where he's gagging, and its really bothering him, or is it spit up? Because spit up is pretty normal, and will not bother the baby. It sounds almost like it could be gas- causing tummy discomfort, which always made my boys want to nurse more- and causing the spit up.
If you think it might be gas, there are some things you can do. Maybe look at his latch- he might be getting more air than he should. Or your diet- whenever I ate lettuce, my boys had bad gas. There are a lot of other foods that you could eat that may cause him to have gas. If it bothers him, gas drops (Mylicon?) always helped for me.
I'm sure there are other ideas out there, but these are what I remember from my babes.


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## violet (Nov 19, 2001)

It's always surprising and frustrating when that hard earned mama milk comes back out and all over you both! I had one who did this regularly. There could be several reasons.
If it is occasionally and messy but not violent (across the room) then it probably isn't really projectile vomiting. It's probably either gas, discomfort causing poor latch/fussy nursing which then causes gas, or foremilk-hindmilk imbalance. Sometimes it's something you ate, but often it's how the baby is nursing. If he is already fussy and doing the on-off-on-off thing he is probably swallowing air. Then, if he continues to nurse, that air has to go somewhere and when he burps, up comes a bunch of milk. It probably isn't all of the milk, but he'll want to feed again, and then if there's still air, up it comes again. My DD was not good at burping and clearing the air out - I really had to work on her to get the air out - otherwise she would cover us both in half curdled milk.

Another thing to watch for is green and or green frothy poops. That can be a sign that he's getting too much foremilk and not enough hindmilk.

If you know when he's getting close to his fussy time, can you try nursing him before then? Sometimes the fussy is really a sign of over hungry-over tired. Some babies just like to nurse for a few hours every night.

Good luck and stock up on burp cloths.
violet


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## dex_millie (Oct 19, 2006)

Thanks for the advice. His poops are mostly seedy yellow. Now and then I see a little green with the seedy yellow poop. I guess I would try burping him every time he pulls off or cry out on the breast and see if it works - I kind of did it before but I guess he already swallowed too much air, because he still threw up on me.


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## CalBearMama (Sep 23, 2005)

My DS also had a fussy hour or two each day until he was about 6-8 weeks old. He was also having lots of gas pain and frothy greenish poops. These problems all resolved about a week or two after I eliminated dairy from my diet (although I'm told it can take up to six weeks to determine whether that is the issue, so if you decide to try eliminating dairy, give it a good long trial). www.kellymom.com has some good information on dairy intolerance in breastfed infants, including a "cheat sheet" of hidden dairy in processed foods. I had never been one to read food labels that much, but now that I do all the time in order to avoid dairy and soy, I find that I'm much better off cooking more things from scratch and avoiding all of the hidden ingredients, preservatives, artificial colors, etc. etc. that are in packaged food.

Although this doesn't relate to the spitting up, another thing you might consider is what your baby is trying to tell you by popping off and on the breast or giving you that little scream. I didn't know about EC (Elimination Communication) when my DS was a newborn, and I really wish I had, because it might have helped explain a lot of his otherwise unexplained fussiness. I learned about EC when DS was about 10 months old, and it really gave me better insight into his behavior. Basically, babies are born with an awareness of their need to eliminate (pee or poop), and they don't want to "soil the nest" by doing it on themselves or on you. So if they need to pee or poop, they may pop off the breast or give a particular cry to try to alert you that you should help them eliminate in an appropriate place. Eventually, if diapers are used, the baby becomes "diaper-trained" and no longer clearly signals the need to eliminate, because the baby knows that he or she is expected to do so in the diaper. For more info, check out www.diaperfreebaby.org and the Elimination Communication sub-forum of the Diapering forum here at MDC.


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