How do you know when to burp her?

[PapayaMom]

My sister is disabled and has a service provider (J) who takes her out once a week to dinner and a dance for special needs people. So over the years I have goten to know her, she is in her early 30s and has 1 daugher, recently remarried and thinking of having more.

Anyway I was over at my parents house the other night with our new baby and was nursing her when J came in. She sat and admired the new babe for a bit and said "but how do you know when to burp her when you feed her like that" I didn't even know how to answer the question and just said oh when she finishes I burp her. Then went on to ask if she should be quiet so she wouldn't disrupt dd. :

Is breastfeeding really that much of a mystery to people?

We went on to talk about how expensive kids and babies are and she was complaining about the high cost of formula and diapers and said tha tmight keep her from having more. I just nodded and said yep they are expensive part of the reason I bf and CD.

[momma2libby]

I burped mine when I was switching breasts in the beginning. I never made a big deal about it. And I never went out of my way to make her burp after she was a month old. If I sat her straight up she'd burp, if not that's fine too. Once again all babies are grouped in with the formula babies who NEED to be helped to burp bc of the air in bottles. DD also was never "gassy". My ff feeding friend thought it was so strange that I never used gas drops. She would always tell me how they wouldn't hurt her if I gave em to my dd. Um...She doesn't NEED them like your kiddo. Geesh!

[Rhiannon Feimorgan]

I know, my mom was always worried if my dc fell asleep nursing without being burped. She thought they would wake up gassy. They never did. If they were asleep there was no way i was going to wake them up to burp them!

[Socks!]

I could never figure out the deal with burping. It all makes sense to me now, with the bottled babes and the additional air they get through the bottles.
Honestly, I never burped my babes. I tried with DS1 at first and caused projectile spit up, so I would just hold him upright for a little bit and leave it at that. With DS2 I never even worried about burping. My kids can burp while sleeping on their back

[lml41981]

My kiddo needed to be burped in between breasts for awhile. But, she gulped and would eat like she was famished...I had oversupply, so I'm pretty sure she swallowed a lot of air while pulling off to slow my flow down.

She also had the most horrible gas...but she was never in pain from it, she just smelled awful when she'd toot. I miss peddling her legs to get her to toot.

[bdavis337]

With a bottle, I always burped at the halfway mark. My good friend bf's her 9 month old, and burps him between sides.

Also, your aquaintance might have been trying to be helpful. When my friend is nursing her son, ANY noise pops him off the boob, and has since he was just a few weeks old. When she picks him up (I babysit him in the a.m. during the week) I always leave the room, put my son down for a nap and then sneak back in, so he can get settled and quiet on the boob before I make my way back in. If we start talking and get too animated, he's done and refuses anymore. I know some of it is his age, but even at just a few weeks old he was a terribly distractible nurser. I tend to err on the side of caution with a nursing mama, I'd hate to interrupt dinner just because I wanted to talk a bit more!