Help with Reflux

My daughter was diagnosed at the exact same age. They put her on children's liquid Zantac, also recommeded I try Neutramigin. It is a predigested formula, I would buy the concentrate mix up a pitcher and make bottles. Having the bottles cool in the fridge helped her tremendously. She was done with meds by 6 mos and ready to try solids so she outgrew it or got past it in two months. Everything I ate effected her stomach so I had to stop breast feeding earlier then I cared for, the formula isn't cheap but it is so worth it when they start really thriving. She was a small baby to begin with and started really catching up and so much happier without tummy issues.
Try the predigested formula. She had a cold at 6 weeks and the Pediatric Dr at Childrens said to try cold bottles to help soothe her throat and then on she preferred cool bottles, I could make a batch of bottles in the morning and store them in the fridge and just take them out for feedings, when the reflux came into play it helped even more!
Good luck, they typically outgrow them. If you are breast feeding you have to really moderate everything you eat, low acid, easily digested foods, avoid dairy, spice and so on.
The Neutramigin helped her the most though.

I feel your pain. My little preemie guy was doing the same thing all the time when he was born. He is 3 months now and is doing much much better as time goes by. He did it while on the predigested formula just as much as he did it while on the soy formula. So while these other women say it helped to be on the expensive formula, for us it did not make any difference. Now he is on milk-based formula and regurgitates his meal from time-to-time (it worries the hell out of me!), but all in all, he is much better. I think this is mostly attributed just to time. As they get older and bigger, they will grow out of it. He is on Zantac but that only helps to keep the lining of the esophagus nonirritated when he does throw up. We have him on a schedule so I know he is getting regular nutrition, and he often sleeps in an elevated surface like a carseat. I put him on his right side sometimes to sleep, as that takes the pressure off the tummy. I do still hold him upright a lot. I wonder if your Dr. would recommend you start her on cereal or something, just to kind of hold things down? Just a thought.

This will sound crazy and I'm sure you will never try it. But with all three of my kids and friends kids, I used peppermint candy. Put on candy in a 8oz bottle, fill the bottle up to one or two ozs, with hot, as hot as you can get the water, helps the candy desolve faster. Once atleast all the red is off candy, fill the bottle to what ever you normaly do, with the same water in it that had the candy in it, forgot to mention take the candy out. Make your bottle as you normaly do. Now for me this has always worked. Wish you luck as I know it can get hard.

I have a 9 month old son who has reflux, and he started experiencing problems around 4 months. His was really bad too, and he also had difficulty gaining weight. His doctor prescribed him medication that he still takes twice a day, and he really started gaining weight and doing better with the reflux once he started solids. (But ask your doctor! I waited to introduce solids until my son was 6 months). Also make sure to hold her upright for 20 - 30 minutes after she eats, and try to burp her really well.
Hang in there! It will get better!

My son had some minor reflux, and I also had an extra strong let down. I was told to feed my son with him sitting up (I was told that they do this for reflux and the letdown). I would prop him on some pillows in a modified football hold, and burp him, or at least hold him upright while cuddling often throughout feeding. Then it was keeping him upright after eating that was harder for me. My husband and I would sit on the couch with our knees up on the ottoman and one of us would have him sit against our thighs and play with him that way. Or I would hold him or put him in a front carrier. A sling worked great, or the Ergo carrier. Good luck.

Hi C.,

What a relief a diagnosis! Hang in there the baby is only 4 months old, most kids outgrow reflux by 12 months. Once he/she starts sitting things get easier.

My kids both had silent reflux, which meant they just screamed, refused to eat a lot of things, and wanted to suckle at the breast a lot vs. eating.

I don't have much advice for kids who vomit the food up....(I am assuming she stops screaming after she vomits)....But I have heard that having a laundry tub with water and a little detergent around to throw clothes in helps.

IF you are breastfeeding you need to change your diet--no caffiene, chocolate, garlic, tomatoes, citrus, high fat foods, cinnamon, and diary can be a culprit. If you are formula feeding Nutramigen worked well for my daughter at 6months when I weaned her (takes a while to get the baby to accept the formula). But she seemed happier. No matter how you are feeding her, try smaller feedings more frequently (time nursing) and bury every minute and try Mylecon drops (they don't interact with Zantac or prevacid).

She will get better. Keep her upright in a carrier as much as possible. The Moby wrap or Sleepy wrap both look great for reflux babies (if you find you both like them, buy an extra for when she gets sick).

You are doing the right thing, and she is going to get better!

R.

My son is also just over 4 months old and he was diaganosed with reflux. He was put on prevacid and I had to dissolve a pill in water and give it to him. I also had to give him Zantac. I didn't think either medicine was working so my last dr. appt I asked my peditrician to write the prescription so the pharmacy mixes the prevacid and it will be eaiser for me to give. It was very spendy but I think it is now helping him a lot. I quite giving him the Zantac and only give him the prevacid. I also have his bed elevated and was told not to lay your baby down for at least 1 hour after they eat. I birp my son after every ounce of milk he drinks and that helps with the spitting up. You could have your baby sleep in the car seat as well. Good Luck!

Hi,
My son was diagnosed with it when he was a baby. (He's 2 now) What I did was raise his crib up on one side to a 15-20 degree angle to where his head was elevated when laying. So when he laid down for his naps and bedtime he would not throw all of his food up. Another thing was that after he ate we just held him upright for a few minutes, no burping just holding upright. Then after a while we would burp him. He would rarely spit anything up if we did that. We also would make sure that he was not swung or swayed while being held, he was pretty stationary. Within a few months we had him cured of the reflux. The doctors did give us medicine, but I found that it made the situation worse so we didn't give him the medicine.

My daughter had reflux as a baby as well. They put her on Prevacid and it helped a lot. I also made sure she slept at an angle so her head was elevated. You can do this by putting towels under the crib mattress or if you have a co-sleeper you can raise one side. As she got older she grew out of it as well. Good luck!

C.,

My daughter was diagnosed with reflux at 3 months. They told us to always feed her upright at least a 45 degree angle. She wouldn't sleep at night so we had to prop her bed up as well by putting pillows under it. We switched formulas to Nutramagin (which is really for colic but helped tremendously once she was on it and then the doctor put her on zantac twice daily for it. She is six months now and we switched off the Nutramagin last month. She is doing fine with the Emfamil Gentl Lease formula as long as she gets hers meds every day. All of that combined really helped my daughter!

Hi C.. You're getting lots of great advice and I'll just sort of reiterate here but my son also has silent reflux, so I'm not as much help with the vomiting, but I did go through all of the frustrations of not knowing quite what to do! I'll tell you what we did but do know that it does get better. Our son is 7 1/2 months now and while we do still have him on medication, it's so much more manageable now!

Two websites that I found to be enormously helpful were:
http://www.infantreflux.org/ - scroll down a bit and on the left there is a link for the message boards and there are tons of parents with tons of great advice on there.
http://www.marci-kids.com/ - lots of information about medications and dosage (there is even a dosage calculator where you enter your babies weight, age and it suggests dosage).

I decided to exclusively breast feed. We tried all of the formulas but they didn't really seem to help and some of them are SO expensive. That said, if you breast feed, like others have said, you have to be really strict about what you eat and I know it's just too much of a drag for a lot of people. But if I was very careful about cutting out dairy, citrus, chocolate, caffeine, cruciferous veggies, and tofu (I could get away with soy milk but not tofu), oh, and wine if you drink it (basically just think of anything that could give an adult heartburn and cut that out!)... I found his reflux calmed down enormously.

Also - the suggestion of not patting to burp really helped us. Patting only stirs up the bubbles and causes more gas (at least for us). If you massage up the back, especially focusing on the area about an inch below the shoulder blades, this stimulates the nerves that aid in digestion and it really brings up the burps in one big air pocket instead of lots of little ones. The first time I did it I didn't think it would work and he was in so much pain, but it works so much better!

We kept his crib/bassinet mattress at a 30 degree angle. There are suggestions on the inflantreflux.org website about how to build a "nest" under the crib sheet to keep them from sliding down. This helps a lot until they get really mobile and then there just seems to be no way to keep them in place! We just recently had to lower the mattress - we tried going all the way flat but the reflux got worse, so now we only have it at about 5-10 degree angle and that seems to work just fine and he doesn't slide around either. But for a while, do try to keep the angle at roughly 30 degrees (think 6 inches of height on one side of the crib).

I'm sure you've heard all of this but keep them upright for a good 30 minutes after they eat. It's tough if you still feed in the middle of the night (which is something that is recommended for reflux babies -smaller, more frequent meals), but it does make a difference. Sometimes, I even found that laying him down to change his diaper shortly after feeding him caused acid to come up. So I'd always try to make sure to change him before I fed and then only do it if I really needed to within that 30 minute window after feeding.

As far as medication, we had him on both Zantac and Prevacid for a bit. It really took almost a month to see a difference with the Prevacid but then it made all of the difference in the world! The biggest way to make it effective is to time the dosing. Make sure you give it on an empty stomach (they recommend at least an hour after feeding, but sometimes we only did 30 minutes and it still seemed to work) and then you have to wait at least 30 minutes until you feed them again. There is also a new medication called Zegerid (you can read about it on that Marci Kids website) that doesn't require timing but we haven't tried it yet as the Prevacid seems to work just fine.

Anyhow, feel free to send me a message if you need. Hang in there - it DOES get better!!

Our son had Xantac and Prevacid. One in the morning, one at night. Sorry I don't remember exactly. One helped reduce acid and one helped speed digestion, so his stomach emptied sooner and less could come back. It worked great. Our daughter has been on Xantac since day 2. We're probably going to have to switch her to Prevacid on Monday as she's not growing. Axid is another med that one of our doctor friends really likes. The way our son was treated is very nontraditional and a lot of doctors still question it when we go through his medical history, so you probably couldn't get that, but it worked great for him. He gained 2 pounds in 2 weeks after having lost weight for 6 months straight! You may have to play with the meds. The meds that were available for our first son made him vomit horribly, so if you get adverse reactions, call immediately. There's a lot available. Our son's problems also started around 4 months, because babies don't have to swallow what's in their mouth at that age. If he's a really messy drinker and gets milk all over, it's probably time to also get a feeding eval done. They can help with swallowing. If that's the problem, you'll also notice a lot of choking and gagging. I no it's frustrating and scary when your kids aren't growing the way they should. If you need any encouragement, we've been down that road twice. I'd love to help! GL!

I have a couple suggestions. My daughter was diagnosed with reflux when she was 3 months old and putting her on nutramigen helped alot also I was shown how to do a massage burping so instead of bouncing her and stirring up all the acid in her stomach more I calmley rubbed her back in an upward motion with my hand cupped just hard enough so she'd wiggle a bit and that worked great not only did it stop the spitting up but it kept enough food down her that she gained 5lbs in a month my doctor was shocked I hope this helps I know that theres not much you can do my girl just turned 7 and started with the spitting up again now the doc. says she has reflux again so now we are back on medicine. GOOD LUCK.

Have you ever thought about taking your baby to see a chiropractor? She could have a subluxation (fancy term for a vertebrae that is out of proper alignment) that is pinching on a nerve that controls digestion.

Most chiropractors would do a free consultation and exam - and it would be worth it to see if there is anything going on with your baby's spine.

My son, now 6, was born with some significant special needs. He too had severe reflux. You have gotten a lot of great advise already, so I will just add this bit. We saw a terrific GI doctor (Rocky Mountain Pediatric GI-they are great!) After a long time on reflux meds. (Prevacid) we ended up needing surgery to correct the GERD. I don't want to scare you, just to let you know that the surgery was the best thing we ever did for our son! He is 6 now and a wonderfully healthy kid! He started gaining weight right away after the surgery. It is not likely that your child's case is as severe as ours was, but know that 'this too shall pass'. Reflux is a common problem and the doctors are very experienced with treating this condition! Best of luck!

C.,
usuall around the age of 6mo when your baby is sitting up the reflux will improve. we had to have our little girl on prevacid for about the first 7 months of her life. it will improve...but it's tough when you're in the middle of it. i would just recommend keeping her upright when you're feeding or nursing and making sure you burp her enough during feedings. good luck to you.

I have a 4 month old son and he has the same problem the doctor priscribed ranitidine witch is generic for zantac syrp or you may want to try gripe water you can get that at any grocire store. your baby will still spit up or even throw up but is will decress so your baby can start to gain wait. if you give your baby a bottel you my want to thiken up the formula or breastmilk with ceareal but check with your doc. i hope this can be helpful for you

Hey, I'm sorry to hear that. I know exactly what your going through. My son had reflux and wasn't gaining any weight. We had many appointments, and after many tests and a barium swallow they finally found out that it was reflux, It was very frustrating and scary. We were recommended to a ped. gastroenternologist and without meds we got it under control. We just started feeding him rice cereal in his bottle with the nipple slit, which was thick enough to keep it down and it eventually went away. He's 17 months and doing great so I wish you the best of luck and if you have any questions or just need reasurrance let me know. I know that you can get through this!!!