Why does the baby spit up?

Is it worth worrying if your baby spits up? This phenomenon is one of the most common problems of infants. Why is this happening? Is it necessary to urgently contact a specialist?

Regurgitation is the passive ingestion of a small amount of food into the esophagus, mouth or throat from the stomach. This is accompanied by the escape of air and occurs mostly in infants during feeding or a little later. The outgoing masses are unleaded or partially curdled milk.

According to statistics, about 70% of four-month-old children do this at least once a day. The fact that the baby spits up, is considered by 23% of parents as a serious reason to sound an alarm. But this phenomenon, as a rule, passes independently during the first year of life of the crumbs.

So why does the baby belch?

This process can be observed in infants with a delay in fetal development or in those who were born before the term. Such factors influence the formation of the processes of coordinated sucking, breathing and swallowing, which in the event of such a birth are slow (about six to eight weeks). The frequency of regurgitation is an individual indicator. As the body grows stronger, this phenomenon disappears.

Possible causes of regurgitation:

- overfeeding. This may occur due to an increase in the volume or the multiplicity of feedings. Most often this phenomenon is observed in newborns who actively suck (if the mother has enough milk). There is also the risk of overfeeding a child with mixed feeding, when the infant's diet also includes an artificial mixture (in the event that the parents have not yet decided on a certain product brand and often change it). If a child spits a curd during feeding or shortly after it, adults should think about reducing the amount of milk consumed because the reason for this phenomenon is considered overfeeding;

- aerophagy. This swallows a large amount of air during feeding. It can be observed in greedy sucking, excitable children, beginning with the second-third weeks of life. This happens for the following reasons:

• Insufficient milk from the mother (or lack thereof);

• Incorrect grip of the nipple to newborns;

• Too large aperture in the bottle or its horizontal position;

• General muscle weakness, due to the immaturity of the child's body.

The most frequent development of aerophagia is observed in newborns with insufficient or rather large body weight;

- flatulence, intestinal colic, constipation. In such cases, the pressure in the abdominal cavity is increased, and the progress of food through the gastrointestinal tract is disrupted.

- malformations of the gastrointestinal tract: abnormalities of the stomach, esophagus, diaphragm and others.

If a child spits a fountain, and it happens often enough and in large amounts, which causes obvious discomfort to the baby and leads to a decrease in the weight of his body, you must immediately contact the district pediatrician.

However, in most cases, the reason that the baby belches is not pathological. This problem is eliminated by itself by the twelve to eighteen months of your baby's life.

To prevent regurgitation, you need to ensure that the child correctly grasps the breast. With artificial feeding, do not allow the bottle to be positioned horizontally, when the nipple is partially filled with air (too large a hole in it is also undesirable). Before feeding it is recommended to lay the newborn on the stomach, and after it is necessary to hold the baby in an upright position for 15-20 minutes.