More people in the U.S. have probably seen babies burped than have seen them diapered, helped to sleep, breastfed, etc. This is really a pity, because as near as I can tell, burping is a pointless waste of time. We tried a lot of different burping strategies, learned from books, videos, other people. Teddy spits up when he spits up and he doesn't when he doesn't. Burping may help the burbles move along, both up and down, but he's fully capable to getting the burbles to move on his own as long as he can squirm. Burping after every feeding effectively defeats attempts to nurse a baby to sleep, which makes the activity seem a little suspicious on the face of it, and attempts to find cross-cultural burping strategies have thus far failed for me. If you want to burp your baby and you've got something you think is working, more power to you. But if no amount of burping prevents your baby from spitting up after you think you're done, well, don't worry about it too much. Wear machine washable clothing and put towels or sheets over any valuable furniture.
Teddy seems to spit up primarily when he's eaten a lot recently. He tends to want to nurse a lot in the evening and when he does nurse to the point he starts spitting up, he seems more likely to sleep longer. Thus, I interpret spitting up as a sign it is time to try other comforting measures like bouncing or rocking him. Despite what Newman says, if I try very hard to get Teddy to latch onto my breast (and sometimes even succeed) when he's starting to spit up, I'm really asking for even more spit up to come up on my breast and dribble down my belly and onto my thigh. So I don't do that any more. Much.
Gordon and Goodavage in Good Nights (which is mostly about the family bed, but has some great breastfeeding tips) agree that burping is largely pointless and certainly agree that burping defeats the nurse-the-baby-to-sleep strategy.
I've met an exclusively breastfed baby whose spitup stained; I had not realized that was possible. After briefly eliminating milk from her diet, the mother apparently was able to reintroduce milk without the scary-yellow spitup returning.
Teddy no longer nurses in the evening continuously. He nurses about every hour and a half, day and night, usually one boob at a time. He can be convinced to take more, and then go longer without nursing (particularly if he's sleeping not next to me). Most of his spitup is in the morning, after a long night of eating and sleeping, followed by a morning nap, and then waking up to nurse some more. My husband has a hiatal hernia (apparently his entire family does, and suffers from some degree of reflux as a result) and suspects that is why Teddy continues to spit up when very well fed.
Teddy periodically emits a raucously loud burp, which may or may not be dry, but never fails to amuse me. I am, of course, easily amused.
Since he started rolling over onto his belly, he sometimes rolls onto his belly, apparently to help the burps along.
Copyright 2006 by Rebecca Allen.
Created January 31, 2006 Updated March 8, 2006