Many breastfeeding moms worry about the effect their diet has on their baby and look for the possible food culprit whenever the baby has gas or a colicky night. While your diet can affect your baby when you're breastfeeding, the foods most likely to cause problems often aren't the ones you would think.
Definition
Everyone -- babies included -- has gas at one time or another. If your baby is passing gas but seems perfectly happy otherwise, there's no reason to worry about her. If she's passing gas, squirming, tense and obviously unhappy, consider eliminating the common causes of gas in breastfed babies to see if it helps.
Common Causes
The foods that give you gas aren't likely to be the foods that can cause gas in your baby. Spicy foods, cabbage, broccoli and other foods give you gas from local reactions in your intestines. Baby gas caused by foods most often occurs as the result of food sensitivity or allergy. The most common culprits include dairy products, corn, eggs, peanuts, fish and wheat, lactation consultant Jan Barger explains on BabyCenter. Author and pediatrician William Sears, M.D., adds caffeine, chocolate and soy to the top offenders list.
Other Culprits
Your diet isn't the only thing that can give your baby gas. An immature gastrointestinal system, crying and swallowing air and getting too much foremilk, which has more lactose, or milk sugar, and less fat, also can cause gas. Make sure your baby gets enough hind milk by having him completely empty one breast at each feeding before switching to the other side rather than nursing a little on each side. Don't nurse on just one side per feeding without discussing your plan with your baby's pediatrician; you need to be sure the baby gets enough to eat, Barger advises.
Elimination Diet
The easiest way to see if one of the most common allergens is causing your baby's gas is to eliminate all high-allergy foods for one or two weeks to see if there's any improvement. If there is, add back the common offenders one at a time. Dr. Sears recommends following a restricted diet of low-allergy foods for two weeks and adding back a food every four days for severe cases.
Prevention
Dairy is the type of food most likely to cause gas in breastfed babies. Between 2 percent and 7 percent of babies have an allergy to cow's milk, lactation consultant Anne Smith states. Eliminating or reducing dairy in your diet from the start might help avoid gas caused by food allergies.
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