[Submitted Question]

My six-week old son cries all the time. I am breastfeeding him and I am afraid that my milk is giving him gas. Which foods should I avoid to help him feel better?

[WombToBloom]

Your baby likely has colic which will pass by three months of age. There is no particular food that can definitely prevent colic. There are other reasons why breastfeeding could cause colic. Human milk changes during a feeding.

One of the ways in which it changes is that the amount of fat increases as the baby nurses longer at the breast. If the mother automatically switches the baby from one breast to the other during the feed, before the baby has finished the first side, the baby may get a relatively low amount of fat during the feeding. This may result in the baby getting fewer calories, and thus feeding more frequently.

If the baby takes in a lot of milk (to make up for the reduced concentration of calories), he may spit up. Because of the relatively low fat content of the milk, the stomach empties quickly, and a large load of milk sugar (lactose) arrives in the intestine all at once.

The protein which digests the sugar (lactase) may not be able to handle so much milk sugar at one time and the baby will have the symptoms of lactose intolerance--crying, gas, and explosive, watery, greenish bowel movements. This may occur even during the feeding.

These babies are not lactose intolerant. They have problems with lactose because of the way you are breastfeeding and is not a reason to switch to lactose free formula. Some babies have problems with onions, spicy foods, cabbage, chocolate and foods high in C concentrate.

If you reduce these and the infant is still colicky, then it is colic and you need to breastfeed as noted above.