Hiccupy Baby

Since having Emily, I’ve discovered that there are plenty of things they don’t tell you about babies, but perhaps the most surprising one was the fact that they get hiccups. A lot. In Emily’s case, she got her first bout of them when she was just a day old and I was still in hospital recovering from my Caesarean. Little girl had just had a feed when she broke into a bout of uncontrollable hiccuping – and naturally, being a new and rather bewildered mum, I panicked.

When a midwife eventually came to my aid, following much frantic pressing of the call button, I pointed out to her that my baby was hiccuping and I didn’t know what to do. She reassured me that it’s quite common for babies and was nothing to worry about, but the fact it was normal baby behaviour came as news to me.

Since then, Emily has had a bout of the hiccups on an almost daily basis – true, they’ve tailed off a bit recently (ever since she learned the art of self-burping – these days, instead of my having to pat her on the back after she’s had a feed, she simply sits on my lap looking a bit lost and puzzled until the wind comes up). But she still has days when she gets one, or two, or four bouts of them.

What’s even more surprising is how little it seems to bother her. My own experience of hiccups is that they can be quite uncomfortable at times, yet Emily appears totally unphased by the whole experience, either looking a little bit surprised as she hiccups away, or just dismissing them as a minor inconvenience that isn’t going to get in the way of playtime.

They didn’t even seem to concern her the other week when she broke into a fit of giggles in the supermarket, while tackling a bout of hiccups at the same time. The resulting hiccupy giggly noise was rather peculiar, but somewhat adorable nonetheless.