How to Get Rid of Baby Hiccups?

Baby hiccups are common but it can bother you more than it bothers your baby. Most babies grow out of chronic hiccups as their digestive systems develop, and mostly all the hiccup attacks go away on their own. However, hiccups may cause your baby discomfort, they may disrupt feeding of the baby, and they may indicate acid reflux if they are accompanied by vomiting and stomach pain. Hiccups are caused by the diaphragm muscle being either stimulated or irritated. It doesn’t cause any problem to baby or even adults. However, you can follow these remedies to get rid of baby hiccups.

Ways to Get Rid of Baby Hiccups:

1.) Review your Latching Technique

Babies can also start hiccup when they swallow too much air during feeding. Try to listen for rhythmic, regular sucking. If your baby is bottle feeding too quickly and sucking in air, you will hear him/her gulping and swallow loudly.

• If you are breastfeeding you have to make sure that your baby’s lips should open wide and that they form a tight seal around your entire areola, not just the nipple. Don’t hunch or lean forward when you breastfeed your baby, as this may make it difficult for your baby to latch.
• Aim your nipple at the top of your baby’s mouth. Do this when your baby opens her mouth widely so that the nipple lays directly onto her tongue. If your baby mouth doesn’t open wide naturally, encourage her by gently touching lips and mouth. Pull her towards you with pressure her back to get rid of baby hiccups.
• If you are feeding your baby from the bottle. Tilt the bottle to a 45-degree angle,and bottom-up, so that your baby sucks in more milk than air. Consider using a bottle with collapsible bag inserts bottle because these bottles are designed to reduce air swallowing.

2.) Water to Get Rid of Baby Hiccups

You can give water to your baby if he/she is older than six months. This is a wonderful remedy for hiccups even for adults.

• Fill a glass of water about half, and tightly pull a tissue across the rim to regulate the flow. Gently give your baby a few small sips of water. Be sparing.
• Babies don’t need to drink water if  they are smaller than six months, they get all of the hydration that they need from breast milk. Don’t give water to your baby if he/she is younger than six months because too much water can affect the body’s ability to absorb the nutrients in breast milk. It will also curb your baby appetite by making her feel full.

3.) Try Little sugar to Get Rid of Baby Hiccups

This suggestion might have started out as an old wives tale, but some doctors are actually giving the advice of sugar. Just lick your finger/pacifier and dip it into a sugar bowl. The sugar will stick on a pacifier or your finger. Put your finger on the mouth of the baby.

• Let the baby suck on it for a few minutes, and the hiccups will fade away. The thinking behind the effect of sugar is that the effort required to swallow the sugar disrupts the diaphragm back into normal.
• Try to put only a little amount of sugar underneath the baby’s tongue and encourage them to swallow the sugar quickly, before it dissolves in their mouth.
• Or you can use another way to do this. Dip a pacifier in sugar and put it into your child’s mouth.

4.) Massage your Baby’s Back

A gentle back rub may loosen your child’s muscles, that relaxes the diaphragm. Using upward motions, move your hand from the small of the back up to the shoulder, preferably while the baby is still upright. This technique may take several minutes to start working but it will obviously help to get rid of baby hiccups.

• Another way to do this is to place your baby’s on her belly  on the ground and allow your baby to move around a little bit.
• This should help to get rid of any air bubbles causing the hiccups in the first place. Now gently rub your baby’s back until the hiccups subside.

5.) Consider Keeping a Hiccup Trigger Log

When your baby gets into a hiccuping fit, write down the date, the time, and the circumstances. Which feeding practices and settings seem to trigger your baby’s hiccups?

• If your baby hiccups during and after bottle or breast-feeding, that means your baby will be eating too quickly or gulping excess air. Make sure to feed your baby slowly, so that he/ she didn’t gulp excess air.
• If your baby hiccups at night with painful vomiting, this may be a sign of acid reflux disease.

6.) Try Gripe Water to Get Rid of Baby Hiccups

Many parents use gripe water to soothe the intestinal discomfort of  their children. Although there is no medical evidence that grape water is very effective. You can use it to get rid of baby hiccups.

• You need to dissolve a little bit of gripe water with a bit of water and put it in a dropper. But you need to keep in mind that your baby may be allergic to the ingredients in gripe water, which includes alcohol, dill, ginger, and fennel, among others.
• Don’t give your children if you didn’t find it good.

7.) Don’t Try Any of the Following Methods

Here are some popular folk remedies which could actually hurt your baby inadvertently and it is best to avoid these remedies. These remedies include

• Pressing down on their fontanels.
• Startling your baby.
• Pulling their tongue.
• Pressing down on their eyeballs.
• Slapping your baby’s back.

8.) Examine your Baby for Other Symptoms

Sometimes hiccups are caused by gastroesophageal reflux to the baby. This is a common condition in which babies food flow from the stomach into the esophagus and  cause pain and hiccups. If your baby has hiccups all the time, this could be the reason for hiccups. Here are also the other symptoms which can also cause hiccups to your baby.

• Stomach pain.
• Colicky behavior.
• Spitting up frequently.

9.) Stop Feeding to Get Rid of Baby Hiccups

Stop feeding your baby if he/ she is having persistent hiccups while bottle feeding. Resume feeding when the hiccups get stopped. But if the hiccups are still continuing after 10 minutes, then feeding again.

• Calm a flustered baby by patting or rubbing the baby’s back. Babies who are upset and hungry are more likely to gulp air, which causes hiccups.

10.) Distract your Baby to Get Rid of Hiccups

Distracting your baby could be effective to get rid of baby hiccups and even for adults. It happens many times when you suffer from hiccups, and you start doing some other things and forget about hiccups, suddenly your hiccups get a stop. You can use this same thing with your baby. Distract him a toy or game, or you can even play with them. There is some games mention which you can try to get rid of baby hiccups. You can play peek a boo with your baby, give your baby a chew toy, give your baby a rattle.

11.) Keep your Child Entirely up

Try to hold your baby in the upright position if you can, or hold their hands in order to get them to stand. It is possible that your baby may be suffering from reflux after eating something. In that type of case, doctors give advise to keep your child in an upright position for 20 to 30 minutes after eating to get rid of baby hiccups.

12.) Stop Hiccups Quickly

Sitting your baby upright can  help to relieve the pressure on the diaphragm of your baby. The gas that is distending on the stomach will rise to the surface and allow your baby to burp and release the pressure.

Preventing Hiccups