Is my baby’s big round tummy normal?

Babies are built round in the middle

Ari’s tummy looked enormous after a feed, but she was comfortable and not crying. We worried we had somehow stretched her stomach.

Babies have short torsos, weak abdominal muscles and a middle full of milk and gas. Compared with an adult, the shape looks very round because it is supposed to.

Soft versus firm is the useful difference

A soft tummy and a settled baby is usually reassuring. We learned more by placing a flat hand gently on Ari’s tummy than by staring at it from different angles.

A firm, tight, shiny or increasingly swollen tummy is different, especially with vomiting, poor feeding, pain or unusual sleepiness. We had that combination once and went in.

Let baby finish the feed

A bottle can keep flowing after a baby is full, especially if the teat is fast. The usual result of taking too much is spit-up and discomfort, not permanent damage.

Paced feeding helped: bottle more horizontal, breaks built in, and stopping when Ari turned away. The difficult part was accepting that the measured amount left in the bottle did not need to be defeated.