Myth: Breast fed babies don’t need to be winded

Why would that be??

 

Video transcript:

Breastfed babies don’t need to be burped. They don’t need to be winded. That’s what a mom came in and told me yesterday which has tricked me to produce this the whole video for you and because I don’t agree. She had been told that by another professional at the hospital and I tried it a couple of times before but not for a while. It’s not the biggest poor bit of advice that comes in.  I thought, okay, why there’s a breastfed baby not need to be winded? 

 

Now, I’m assuming that what they’re getting to is that a baby will suck on the breast and take the amount of milk in that thereafter. Bottle-fed baby, you hold the bottle up and the bottle just pours out and then maybe that baby is gulp, gulp, gulp, having to take that maybe fast flow, okay, out of the bottle. So, maybe you need to pause, wind them, but the breastfeed baby, you don’t because they will take the correct amount out. This is what’s interesting then because this baby was in because they had, she had a poor latch. So mom was in for help for her baby to latch better. 

 

So, straight off, there’s not one fix for all babies. Otherwise, all babies wouldn’t have colic because you know the fix. All babies would sleep because you know the fix. So, kind of broadly saying, breastfed babies don’t need to be winded. Straight off I’m like, that can’t be true, that doesn’t work for all babies, let alone this baby whose latches aren’t very good and might be taking more air when they’re breastfeeding and therefore, definitely needs to be winded, and the mom had not been winding this baby for a few weeks and then had decided that they would wind the baby against this advice and then the baby was much better. So, simple advice that was taken on had prevented this baby having less wind because the mom had listened to this advice, okay. 

 

So, this baby was a meerkat baby so if you read the meerkat baby birth type, then you’ll understand that. If you haven’t, it’s a lesson in here, look for the meerkat baby. So, the meerkat baby is very stiff, arches back and it’s strong like this because they’ve had a delivery where they got stuck. This baby has stuck, been stuck for days, kind of very long delivery. It was very stiff and meerkat-y and they are one of the hardest babies to breastfeed because they pull away from the mom. You’ll break trying to bring them in close to feed and they’re always throwing themselves back, so, very hard baby to breastfeed. 

 

So, not only did the mom think that she couldn’t breastfeed very well, when actually she had a meerkat baby. They’re very hard to breastfeed but this baby had a terrible latch and the mom was sore so the whole thing added up to just not working, okay. So, that advice is not great. 

 

You know, you wind your baby and in particular, some babies need more winding. Some babies are great and don’t need any winding but also it’s all down to having a meerkat baby which can be gently helped with seeking a professional that does some sort of cranial-sacral gentle therapy to unwind your baby, okay. So, in conclusion, babies do need to be winded.