Gassy Toddlers?

[zombie_bride]

Does anyone have an exceptionally gassy toddler? My DD is constantly passing gas! Aside from thinking it's rather humorous it doesn't seem to bug her and she has relatively normal bowel movements. I know she has a dairy intolerance but for the most part she is dairy free so I'm not sure what it is. Does gassiness always mean an intolerance or an allergy or can some kids just be really gassy? Anyone know? Thanks!!!

[Julybug]

My son goes through periods of time where he farts all the time.  When he was a little baby, he would explosively fart and poop all the time - sometimes people across a large room would hear it!  Then it lessened in frequency (which is normal), but got to the point that he would clearly be in pain if he didn't poop once a day, and was on average only going ever 1.5-4 days.  It was not a good time for any of us.  Then, almost as inexplicably as it started, it got better again over the course of a few weeks.  The whole phase lasted from about 5mo until about 11mo or so.

Lately (he's now 18.5mo), he seems to be gassier again.  I am not sure if this has something to do with the stomach virus he got 3 weeks ago (threw up for an afternoon, and then had explosive diarrhea 1-3x/day for about 10 days), didn't eat much at all during that time, and now has his appetite back and then some.  (Good thing, he's already small and lost weight with the virus.)  I also got a little freaked out because not only was his weight even further down in the percentiles, but now his height is down too - so I'm trying to be more consistent about giving him his multivitamin (even though it has flouride in it, which doesn't thrill me), since he's been anemic before, and who knows what else he might be low in.  His poops have been pretty normal again for the last week or so (since he started eating a bunch more), but he's been farting a lot more again.  Some nights he's been waking up screaming, though... we're not 100% that it's just more of his gas issues, but it at least seems to be a contributing factor.  But he also had back to back bad ear infections in Nov and Dec, so we're trying to keep an eye on him for that as well.

So I'm not sure if the new bout of gassiness is the vitamin, just his system remembering how to process larger bunches of food after 10 days or so of not eating much and very little variety because of the virus - or something else entirely.

I would say if it doesn't seem to bother her and you have her mostly off dairy since you know that bothers her, I wouldn't worry about it.  I think some people really are just gassy.  I'm a little more concerned with my toddler's gas issues, though, since if the gas gets "stuck" it absolutely does bother him big time.  My husband thinks maybe some of the waking up screaming might be that he's holding in the gas when sleeping, as opposed to when he's awake and he'll just fart as he plays and go on his merry way!

[QTRANDI]

My son is super gassy when he teeths. HTH.

Randi