11 month old with IBS symptoms and I have no idea what I'm doing with food
okay so I know IBS is technically not usually diagnosed this young and our pediatrician has been pretty cautious about putting any label on anything but she's been having these awful crampy episodes where she just screams and pulls her legs up. been going on since around 7 months. some days her stomach looks so bloated I feel like I'm failing her somehow. we started a few solids around 6 months and I have been terrified to try anything new since the bad days started. right now she's mostly still on breast milk with a tiny bit of oatmeal and pureed sweet potato and that's kind of it. I know that's not enough variety but I get so scared of making it worse. the pediatrician said to keep a food diary which I am trying to do but I'm up at 2am on night four of bad sleep and I honestly can't figure out what's triggering anything. everything I read says gut health in infants is really important for the long run and now I'm spiraling about whether whatever is happening now is going to follow her forever. does anyone have experience with this starting so young? or ideas on how to approach new foods when you're scared of reactions? I feel pretty alone in this.
Replies · 9
First of all, you are not failing her. I just want to say that clearly before anything else. The fact that you're up tracking her food and losing sleep over this means you are paying close attention and advocating for her. That matters so much. My journey is a bit different (my 5 year old has had gut issues since he was a toddler) but that feeling of being scared to feed your child, terrified the next thing will be the thing that sets off a bad day, I know that fear intimately. It is exhausting in a way that's hard to explain to anyone who hasn't been there. I don't have specific answers for a baby this young because I'm really not the expert there, but I do think what you said about the food diary is worth sticking with even when it feels impossible. Even messy, incomplete notes helped us eventually start to see patterns. It took weeks though, not days. Please be gentle with yourself tonight.
thank you for saying that. I really needed to read it. the isolation of this is so real, most of my mom friends have babies who just eat everything and I feel like such a mess next to them.
The leg-pulling and screaming at that age can have a lot of causes and honestly your pediatrician is right to be careful with labels. Gut motility and the microbiome are both still developing pretty dramatically in the first year, so what looks like a pattern can sometimes shift on its own as that process continues. Not saying that to dismiss what you're seeing, it clearly is real and hard, just that early gut stuff is genuinely complicated even for specialists. One thing I found really useful when we were doing food diaries for my 4 year old: I stopped trying to track everything and instead just noted the three worst days each week with what the previous 24 hours looked like food-wise. Made it manageable. Whether that would work for an 11 month old I'm honestly not sure, their food window is so small. Have you been able to get a referral to a pediatric GI? Not saying you necessarily need one but if these episodes are frequent and severe it might be worth asking about.
we haven't gotten a referral yet, our pediatrician kind of said let's wait and see for another month. I'm going to ask again at her 12 month appointment if things haven't improved. the three worst days idea is actually really helpful, I've been trying to write down every single feed and it's overwhelming and then I fall asleep mid-entry and lose the whole thing.
The comparison trap is brutal. Those moms aren't better moms, their kids are just having a different experience. That's all. Different is not a grade.
Yeah the every-single-feed level of detail often doesn't even help that much because you can't see the signal through all the noise. Three bad days is usually enough to start noticing if something keeps showing up. Also totally valid to push for the referral sooner if your gut (pun not intended) is telling you something is really off. You know her.
Also just want to gently say, the fear of introducing new foods, I think a lot of us end up there and it makes complete sense. When food has felt like the enemy it's hard to be adventurous. With my son we went through a long phase where our whole household was tiptoeing around mealtimes and it affected all of us. No advice really, just naming it because it's real and it doesn't make you irrational.
good morning. I actually slept a few hours which felt like a miracle. she had a calmer night too, nothing dramatic. I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who replied. I came back to read these first thing and I'm a little emotional. the reminder that tracking doesn't have to be perfect, and that I'm not failing her, it genuinely helped me reset a bit. I'm going to try the simplified diary approach this week and I already have a note in my phone to ask about the GI referral at our 12 month visit. small steps I guess. thank you for making me feel less alone in this.
A calmer night is something. Glad you got some rest. Hope the week is gentle on both of you.