Bfeeding baby with reflux- your diet

[duende]

DD is ebf and has acid reflux. She is also most probably cmpi so I've been dairy free for 4 weeks now. I've also cut out foods which I think can aggravate reflux or gassiness- tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic, spicy stuff, cauliflower, broccoli, acidic fruit. This means raft my diet is pretty limited and I wonder whether I have excluded more than necessary but I'm scared to check...she is only 6 weeks old btw.
Would anyone share their experiences feeding a baby with reflux? Did you adjust your diet? What did they react to?

[JiltedJohnsJulie]

Poor you duede. Has dd been checked for tongue tie. My DS seemed like he had reflux at that age, but it turned out to be tt and upper lip tie. Its worth getting it checked at least.

If you do suspect CMPI have a read of this. It gives some good information including what to expect from your doctor.

Have you read this on kellymom too?

[JiltedJohnsJulie]

Sorry duende

[HadALittleFaith]

I found incidentally that my caffeine intake had a massive effect on DD. Basically we were on holiday and my Dad served me decaf tea all day. I had awful withdrawal but DD's reflux was loads better! I now have one caffeinated drink a day. It's also improved with time, she's now 5MO and although she's still quite sicky, nowhere near as bad and I don't have to hold her upright for 30 minutes after feeds anymore! If you do suspect CMPI I would ask for a referral to a paediatrician.

[duende]

Jilted, thank you. She has been checked for Tt by a couple of people, one was a very good iblc trained lactation consultant with 40 yrs experience, apparently she doesn't have it.
Hadalitte, I'm watching caffeine too although I love coffee. We have been referred to a paed and a dietician but I'm expecting a wait.

[minipie]

have you cut out soy as well as dairy as cmpi babies often can't tolerate soy as well.

personally I would focus on cutting out all dairy and soy (hard enough in itself) and not try to cut out anything else till you've given that a chance. dairy intolerance is by far the most common.

I cut out dairy and soy when dd was diagnosed with reflux but it didn't make any difference - but like Julie it turned out to be TT causing the reflux rather than any sort of food intolerance. sounds like you have been properly checked for TT.

[HadALittleFaith]

I've reported that stanton post as spam.

[NotQuiteCockney]

The thing is, if there are foods that cause gassiness in you, there isn't really any reason to think that those same foods would cause reflux in your daughter. Gassiness is caused by problems digesting those foods. They don't get digested in your gut and then re-made in your breasts.

[duende]

NotQuite I know, I always used to believe this, but even websites like kellymom say that some babies may be sensitive to foods in mums diet which aggravate gas or reflux. I think when you have an unsettled baby, you dread doing anything that could make things worse.
She improved a lot 2 weeks after I cut out diary. I only have small amounts of soya (as in soy lecithin in green and blacks chocolate...), and no eggs.
I worry that I'll have something with tomato based sauce, garlic and onion, she will have a horrendous evening and I will attribute this to tomato, even though it could be just a randomly horrendous evening because she is 6 weeks old...

[magicturnip]

Hullo duende,
I am in the same boat with a six month old. I cut out so much as well, eggs, soya and milk (most likely suspects). As well as garlic, onions, acidic fruit and spicy hot food. It is really hard and I very quickly felt like crap as my diet was so poor.
If you child does have a suspected food intolerance I really strongly recommend that you get prescribed one of the hypo allergic formulas and get your LO taking this. It will be a lot easier to get her/him to take this now then when she is older (it tastes rank but they adapt more easily when younger). We tried at three months and are still trying and failing! And it is pretty near impossible to work out what is causing the pain when you are breastfeeding, like you say yourself, is it coincidence if they have a bad night or is it something you ate? It could be anything. I cannot get my ds to take a bottle at all. My diet is shit and I feel like shit. I am stuck like this for a year. And now he has little teeth and he has started to bite and chew my nipple, making it to painful to feed him. I am beside myself and don't know what to do next. I would hate for you to be in my position so my recommendation is to get him on the bottle now. Sorry if that is not what you want to hear! Notquite is wrong, sorry. I started on lots of beans when I cut out so much food. We both ended up with terrible painful wind!

[NotQuiteCockney]

[url=kellymom.com/health/baby-health/reflux/]Here[/url] is the kellymom page on reflux. They say that allergies and intolerance may play a role (particularly CMP), and that caffeine may be an issue. But not that spicy foods or beans can exacerbate reflux.

They also say that breastfeeding is better for reflux than other options.

Being careful about latch, and watching out for oversupply, or over-active let-down may help.

[NotQuiteCockney]

Here rather.

[duende]

magicturnip, does your DS suffer from reflux and cmpi? Now he's 6 months old maybe you'll be able to get him to drink from a cup? (Still doesn't solve the problem of what exactly he should drink if not breastmilk...) my DS also had reflux and cmpi, I gave up breastfeeding him by 8 weeks ( couldn't work out why he started rejecting the breast, later found out it was reflux), and he took nutramigen ok, to my surprise, as it truly was disgusting.
I'm planning to try DD on a bottle of expressed breast milk in the next couple of days, we will see how she does, haven't been able to get her to accept a dummy, but maybe a bottle will be different.
Have you not tried introducing some of the non dairy foods now your DS is that bit older? (Tomatoes, etc)

[magicturnip]

Duende, yes he does have reflux and cmpi. He never has a stable baseline so is hard to introduce foods to establish reaction. Added complication that he might tolerate foods to some degree but not if I eat too much. I tried soya and seemed okay but after a week he started getting very bad pain at night again so I stopped.