Burping Is Overrated

I've decided that burping the baby is overrated, at least for this baby. I've been suspecting this since the day he was born, but over the past four months, I've had a chance to put my theory to the test. I'm responsible for a minimum of one feed per day, which is the evening feed at about 10:30pm every night. Marcus goes to bed at 7pm, and I wake him up at 10:30 for one more bottle so that he can sleep longer. We've been doing this probably since the beginning of the third month.

When I feed him, he's usually pretty groggy, but wakes up slowly during the feed. After he decides he doesn't want any more, I change his diaper and pick him up to burp him. I'm a pretty patient guy, but burping a baby is boring. I give it about one minute, tops. Most of the time, I fail to elicit a burp. No matter, I put him down and he goes back to sleep.

Guess what? It makes no difference to him whether he burps or not. He sleeps through the night anyway. I realize that this may be just one baby and one data point, but it still counts for something. The idea behind burping is that babies will swallow air when they feed, and the stomach becomes distended and uncomfortable. That may lead to decreased intake, or waking up in the middle of the night with "gas pain" or something like that. So you gotta help bring it up. A bunch of hooey.

Gas pain as we adults experience it is not due to air we swallow; it's due to digestive problems producing gas from inside. Now, if your baby is intolerant to something it's eating, then maybe it has gas that's painful. Possibly in the stomach, but more likely in the intestines. And burping won't help with gas in the intestines. On the other hand, if it swallows air, it'll burp it out, and I feel like it shouldn't need that much help doing it.

Hey, I'm not giving parenting advice. I'm just saying that I do a crappy job of burping my baby, and it doesn't seem to matter.