A Guide To The Best Anti-Gas Drops for Infants

Three weeks ago my first grand child was born, and I was in seventh heaven.  Then the endless nights started and it seemed like my grand daughter was crying from pain more than anything else.  Moms know when their babies cry is a painful cry!

We discussed this with our pediatrician, and he recommended we try infant anti-gas drops containing the active ingredient simethicone.  We read testimonials all over the internet raving about the success of Mylicon Anti-Gas Drops, but every drug store that we went to were completely out of stock with the Mylicon brand.

Next, we decided to try other brands, and there are many of them on the market from which to choose.  Gas-X makes infant drops, and so do Little Tummys, CVS, Walgreens, and Target stores.  We started with the cheapest brands first, and almost all of the brands we purchased were less expensive than Mylicon.

Our pediatrician recommended that we give 0.3 ml of simethicone drops to our baby after every feeding.  He explained that once the gas gets from the stomach into the intestines, there isn't much you can do about it.  So we started to give this dosage at every feeding, and within the first day we noticed a marked improvement in the comfort level of our baby.

Some anti-gas drops seemed worth purchasing again, and there are other brands that I would not buy unless absolutely nothing else were available to us.  By far, the drops that we had the least success with were the CVS Pharmacy brand.  These contained the same active ingredient, simethicone, but they were not palatable.  Our baby would wrinkle up her face and press her lips together, and if we did manage to get any of them into her mouth she immediately spit them out.  It was clear that she did not like the taste of the CVS Pharmacy Infant's Gas Relief Drops.  Not only were we wasting our money, but our baby received very little relief since she spit out so much of the dose.

The second reason I didn't like the CVS brand was the style of the dropper.  The drops are colored almost white, as is the dropper, but the measuring line on the dropper is ALSO white.  This made it very hard to tell when you had the right amount of drops measured out.  We wrote CVS off our list permanently!

The next drops we tried were sold by Walgreens.  These drops are very similar, they are also white in color, and claim to have no alcohol, saccharin, artificial flavors or colors which makes them non staining.  These were easier to measure out, but again my grand daughter didn't like the taste.  None of these are going to do any good if we can't get our baby to keep them down!

As an adult, I have taken Gas-X products to relieve painful gas, but I didn't even know they made an infant formula until we started looking for infant gas relief drops.  The ingredients in the Gas-X version are: Citric Acid, Flavor, Hypromellose, Maltitol Solution, Methylcellulose, Monodiglycerides, Polyethylene Glycol, Polyethylene Glycol Stearate, Polysorbate 65, Water Purified, Sodium Benzoate, Sodium Citrate, Sorbic Acid (A Preservative), Xanthan Gum.

As you can see they are flavored drops, and they are sweetened as well, so this version is much more palatable than the CVS and the Walgreens versions.  This is one brand that I would definitely recommend and our baby did take to these much better than the store brands we tried first.

Last, I will review my favorite of all the infant anti-gas drops that we have used, and this is the Little Tummys brand.  Little Tummys is a bit like the Mylicon drops in that they seem to be very popular and harder to find.  Luckily, my son-in-law has been able to find them well stocked at the Air Force Base Exchange. 

Little Tummys look like the other drops in that they are almost white in color, but the marker on the stopper is black, so it is much easier to tell when you have the proper dosage.  My grand daughter loves the Little Tummys so much that we now jokingly refer to them as "dessert".  She will actually suck the drops right out of the dropper!  We have no problems giving her the anti-gas simethicone medication when we are using the Little Tummys brand.

If you think your child is suffering from gas, please talk to your doctor or pediatrician about the use of simethicone drops before you start on a regimen of this kind.  As I have shown here, most stores sell their own brand of anti-gas drops, but we have found very few of them to work, including the Target brand, which I did not even mention by name in my review. 

Of all the types we purchased and gave to our infant, the Little Tummys are by far the ones we had the most success with.  As long as we keep them in her system and the gas does not move from her stomach to her intestines, she is a much happier baby.