Gas. 

I think of all the things I knew (in theory) about parenting a new-born but had to experience in person to fully appreciate, it is the myriad curiosities of a two-and-a-half-week-old’s digestive tract that have left me the most befuddled. 

I knew in theory that babies had to be burped. I knew in theory they often have problems and discomfort when digesting their latest feeds. I knew in theory that a baby with gas or an obstruction somewhere in his gut might even wake himself up. I guess I’m just shocked at the speed with which I’ve transformed into one of those parents totally obsessed with his baby son’s belches and bowels. 

It’s the pain, that does it. When something’s trapped somewhere deep, the way his little face scrunches up and contorts, how he writhes and twists and clenches every muscle in his body. Often I’m holding him and he’s holding me, his tiny little hand gripping my index finger as he clenches, his fingers white and his face a crimson red with the strain and effort. 

Before you ask, yes, I have tried various techniques for getting things moving at both ends. In fact, my social media feed these days seems to be nothing but baby osteopaths folding infants in half. There’s the classic baby-over the shoulder, pat on the back. There’s the stomach massage, the bicycle legs, and the deep squat.

There’s the baby over the forearm, neck-supported facing out, and the baby-over-the-forearm, neck-supported facing in. My personal favourite is the wiggle-waggle, where you lift him under his armpits with one hand, and take his weight under his butt with the other. You gently move your hands in different directions to bring a range of movement to his digestive track, in the hope you will be rewarded with a range of movements in return.

I knew we’d have disrupted sleep. I just never really accounted for the gas part of being up at night. His mum feeds him – not much I can do there – but the of course, one of us has to sit up imbed for a non-specific amount of time... just waiting. You can never be totally sure he’s been fully burped. There’s no finish line as it were. It’s a judgement call. And at 2.53am when your body is urging you to lie-down and go back to sleep (“Look at him, he seems fiiine”) – you know that if you pull the trigger too early, he’ll be waking himself up in twenty minutes, twisting and groaning in bed. 

When you think about it, it’s pretty crazy that new-borns go from relying on the placenta for all their nutrients to instantly switching on the full length of the complex human digestive tract. It’s not like they ease into it. Alas, as our son’s milk intake has increased, his digestive tract has not quite kept pace. Put simply, the outputs don’t always match the inputs. It’s perfectly normal, of course, and he’s far too young to be hurrying up with a tray of black coffee and prune juice, but sometimes his stomach feels hard to the touch. 

Cruelly, his preferred way of soothing his discomfort is to feed again, which then exacerbates the problem. At 19-days-old he’s not yet ready to listen to reason or comprehend the concept of a vicious cycle. 

I’m back in the office fulltime this week after a wonderful period at home. But I can tell you already that my texts with my wife are gonna’ take on a grimly digestive line of inquiry. The thing about parenting is that while your share in your child’s discomfort you also share in their almighty relief. Especially when someone else is on clean-up.

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