Medicines for Infant Gas

If your baby is crying, fussing or keeping you up at night due to gas pains, you want to find a relief quickly. But before you head to the drug store, there are some things you what to know.

Causes

• Baby gas comes from swallowing air while nursing, drinking from a bottle or crying. Sometimes nursing babies also develop gas due to something their mother is eating, and formula-fed babies may get gas from their formula.

Food Cures

• Finding the underlying cause of gas is always the best idea. Switching to a bottle for gassy babies (like Dr. Brown's) and reviewing bottle-feeding techniques is a good measure as well. Mothers who nurse or express their milk should keep a food diary and eliminate foods from their diet, one by one, that might cause their infant gas pains. These include dairy products, whey, wheat, casein, corn, eggs, fish, eggs, peanuts and caffeine.

  Formula-fed babies should be switched to a product for babies with gas or colic symptoms. Usually these have broken-down milk proteins.

Gas Drops

• While you are attempting to pinpoint the source of your baby's gas, it is perfectly safe to try an over-the-counter baby gas medication. The active ingredient in the safest of them is simethicone, which foams in the body and theoretically helps burps to come out more easily. Although medical studies show mixed results with this sort of medication, many parents swear by it.

  However, when the gas and simethicone move into the digestive tract, the result can be more pain. Simethicone also has zero effect on intestinal gas. For best results, simethicone should be taken after every meal.

Gripe Water

• Many gripe waters sold include sodium bicarbonate (or baking soda). Baking soda works by counteracting the stomach's acids, and works best for temporary relief from acid reflux--not gas. However, there are loose FDA guidelines on the use of baking soda in gripe water, and baking soda can cause side effects like an imbalance of electrolytes. In fact, if you read a baking soda box, most say no one under age 5 should consume the contents.

Homeopathic Drops

• There are also homeopathic medicines that may help your child. Carbo vegetabilis and Cuprum mettalicum may help ease gas pains in some babies, while other remedies rely on ingredients like mint, ginger and chamomile, which may work for milder cases of gas pain. Once again, caution should be used since these medicines are not regulated by the FDA.