It鈥檚 a commonplace occurrence: When a baby is done eating, their mom or dad places them over their shoulder and pats their back to get them to burp.
It turns out that this familiar routine is probably useless.
The theory behind the practice is that while nursing, babies inhale air that needs to be expelled after feeding. Patting their backs causes them to bring up that air, and well, burp.
We鈥檝e all seen babies fuss after eating. That has to be due to gas in their stomachs, right? Wrong. As argues, we have no proof that 鈥済as in the stomach is the cause of fussiness or reflux鈥� and even if it was 鈥渢here is no physiologic reason why babies would need help burping.鈥� If they were bloated, they could burp just like you and I, without help.
鈥淚f anything,鈥� Jones wrote, 鈥渋nfants are protected from gas build up by normal immaturity of the lower esophageal sphincter, which relaxes and opens frequently.鈥� Basically, they naturally vent their own stomachs.
Maybe you鈥檙e worried that not burping babies will cause them to spit up more. That鈥檚 actually been studied! of 71 mother-baby duos found that burping babies did not reduce the rates of colic but did increase the rates of regurgitation or spit-up compared to not burping babies. It makes sense to me, and to Jones, that 鈥渉itting a baby with a full stomach on the back will cause vomiting.鈥�
So, should you burp babies? Well, there鈥檚 probably no harm, so long as you make sure to put a cloth underneath them to catch any vomit. But there鈥檚 probably no benefit either.
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