Babies are gas factories. This is one of the many things I managed to forget between the twins’ infancy and Grant. 

In newborns, the ‘ole digestive tract is not developed (they get nourished through the umbilical cord, remember), so when they start gulping stuff down, they are in for a rude awakening. 

For whatever reason, the gas is worse at night (almost universally) – I don’t know why but would love to know more here – and maybe for us it’s because we lay Grant flat at night in his bassinet, but during the day he is more elevated in a rock-n-play. I worry about letting him sleep all night (and all day) in the rock-n-play, because I don’t want him to stop being able to sleep flat. But as I look over the past nights of sleep, neither of us are sleeping much. Here are the last few days – each time is when he wakes us up to demand feeding (usually accompanied by a lot of squirming and farting (by him, you guys)).

The times start at AM, so for this past Wednesday, he had a feed at 2:04am, then 2:25am, etc. For close feedings such as that one, typically he eats until he falls asleep, I change him (as he generally shits his drawers pretty dramatically while eating), then he wakes up for another round of eating. 

You can see quite a bit of cluster feeding going on, which is how he boosts milk production. Of course, gulping down fast flowing milk (and he does gulp-gulp-gulp-gasp-gasp-gulp-gulp-gulp), leads to more gas, as he swallows air while gulping. 

So it’s all a beautiful, natural cycle filled with plenty of time in the middle of the night to observe the dark interior of the bedroom while getting farted on. Nature.