Swollen Baby Belly: Causes and Remedies (2025)

In the first months of life, theswollen belly in the newborn may also be associated with other intestinal disorders manifesting as dyschezia, constipationegaseous colic.

But why does the baby have a swollen belly, a strained abdomen and suffer from these intestinal complaints?

In this article I explain the causes, remedies and a massage for a swollen baby's belly.Furthermore, I show you why a bloated belly is often related to dyschezia, constipation and gaseous colic.

Spoiler: these disorders are NOT caused nor by intestinal immaturity nor by a lack of coordination of the anal sphincter butby an inflammatory bowel picture.

Many mothers note that thethe baby's abdomen is swollen, tense and hard.

This happens in the first months of life when the baby starts to suffer from gastro-intestinal disorders such as dyschezia, constipation and gas colic.

But why the belly is swollen and why the swelling is oftenrelated to intestinal disorders?

The answer is simple and stems from the new definition of gaseous colicor rather, by thereal causes of dyschezia, constipation and colic.

La belly of the newborn child is swollen due to an inflammatory bowel picture causing bloating, abdominal tension, pain and altered intestinal transit.

When the swelling is slight and themoderate inflammationthe newborn suffers little from stomach ache and moderate intestinal disorders: we are in the case of theinfant dyschezia.

When theintestinal inflammation increasesthe belly becomes more swollen, tense and hard.

As a result, the discomfort experienced by the child increases, the intestinal transit worsens (constipation), gas is created (air in the belly) and the newborn cries for the gaseous colic.

Infant gas colic (and consequently abdominal bloating) arecaused by an inflammatory bowel picture.

Here is why the child has the swollen and sore belly.

Gaseous colicare NOT caused by intestinal immaturity(can an immature intestine give pain?!).

This is demonstrated by without a shadow of a doubt a recent 2018 scientific study (Tu Mai et al., "Infantile Colic, New Insights into an Old Problem',published in the magazineGastroenterology Clinics of North America)

Only in the light of this new discovery and the real causes of a baby's swollen belly and colic, we can understand remedies and understand how to really make bellyaches go away.

Remedies for a baby's swollen belly, dyschezia, constipation and colic start with knowledge of all the factors that cause them.

Here are the remedies, how to help your child expel air and above allhow to really make bellyaches go away to the newborn child:

• If the infant is breastfed, it is essential to investigate and improving maternal nutrition (inescapable -click here for more on maternal nutrition and colic).

• If the child is artificially breastfed one has to evaluate how the milk is offered (position), the type of feeding bottle, the teat and much more...

• One must always assess the mobility of the thoracic diaphragm and the pelvic one. In fact, these play an important role ingastric emptying and intestinal peristalsisVery often there are severe limitations in children caused by intrauterine malpositions or difficult births;

• The presence of objective gastric and intestinal smooth muscle tensionthat create pain for the child and slow down the transit; to notice this, one only has to palpate the child's abdomen at the stomach and assess the visceral and ligamentous tensions.

I myself always teach parents in the studio theOsteo-Massage at belly.

• The presence of neck and back contracturesthat might annoy the child and make him irritable.

• Many other parameters you will find in the video course ''Treatment and prevention of gaseous colic and gastro-oesophageal reflux''.

Afirst exerciseto improve dyschezia and constipation is toflexing the legsof the newborn child towards the belly; in this wayslightly increase pressureabdominal and promote theexpulsion of airand offaecesfrom the belly.

I advise you tomake these movements and massages when the infant is calmnot when he has a bellyache.

Asecond movementyou can do to help your newborn baby make air out of his or her belly and improve constipation is certainly thechild massage Sun and Moon.

This massage consists of alight pressure on the bellyof the newborn child, withmovementstracing the stylised image of the sun (circle) and the moon (semicircle).

The idea is to massage in a peristaltic direction the intestine to facilitate the intestinal transit and help the infant to eliminating air from the belly.

The third way (as well as the more effective) to massage your baby's belly and improve abdominal bloating, dyschezia, constipation and colic, is theBelly Osteo-Massage.

Osteo-massage is a osteopathic massage sequence which I designed and teach all the time to the parents of my young patients.

These massages are to be done when the child is calm, in combination with all the precautions I explain in the course "Treatment of gaseous colic".

Above is a video extract of the courseBelly Osteo-Massageof the newborn child.