“My baby is straining at the breast, and I’m worried. Everything was going well with breastfeeding, but he’s been uncomfortable for a few days now. When he has been suckling for a while he starts to push and straining, gets uncomfortable, and makes noises. Is my breast milk bad for him? Should I do anything? I don’t know what’s wrong with him, and I’m very upset to see him like this.”

Anonymous LactApp user

Breastfeeding babies do many things and some of them may surprise or worry you. The idyllic image we have in our heads, of the peacefully sleeping baby in complete silence and a relaxed and smiling mother- is not reality.

Babies do so many things while they are feeding at the breast, and the more they grow up, the more things they do. In fact, after about one month (sometimes even before), babies begin to wriggle, make noises, squeeze, turn red, stretch, and shrink their legs, showing discomfort, and you hear the noises of their tummy. And you might start to wonder, what is happening?

Why do babies push and strain when breastfeeding?

Pushing and straining is normal and is part of the baby’s learning process. At birth, babies have a gastrocolic reflex that allows them to eat and have a bowel movement within a few seconds. That is why when they start to suckle, you hear their tummy moving. It can scare you a lot to hear their tummy rumbling, but this is totally normal and healthy. Your baby is going to grow now more than in any other stage of life, and that’s why they need to continuously leave room for more food. Remember that in the first weeks of a baby’s life, a good sign that the baby is eating is that they soil a diaper after every feed. This is a normal pattern for exclusively breastfed babies.

By the time they reach one month of age, this reflex sometimes disappears, and babies now have to learn to push to poop and pass their bowel movement. This change causes them to be restless when they are feeding at the breast; they make a lot of noises, pull on the mother’s nipple, and turn red when pushing.

This is a normal learning process, which, even though it might be scary, has to happen. And it’s important that they learn this on their own. In some places, some grandmothers or other people still sometimes give wrong recommendations in this case: such as stimulating the anus with a stick/ a thermometer/ a match stick or giving laxatives and medication for constipation. None of them are good ways to help a baby to poop, because there are more appropriate ways to do it:

• Don’t intervene; just keep your baby at the breast, try to stay calm, and know that what is happening is completely normal.
• Massage the baby’s belly in a clockwise direction.
• Gently bend their legs over their tummy and then carefully stretch them out.
• Give them a bath with pleasantly warm water so that they relax the anal sphincter and can poop more easily.