Argh!!! Reflux.

[NewMumSept2014]

Please tell me the story of your refluxy babies?
DS is 5.5mo and started to show signs at about 3mo. He's FF and my life is a constant battle to get him to take the bottle. He'll take it ok when he wants to go to sleep but no more than 0.5 to 1oz when awake. Lots of crying screaming and back arching. I have him on ranitidine which really helped initially but the last few weeks he's been awful again. Have increased the dose according to weight gain but hasn't made any difference yet.
I guess I just want to know if anyone has been in same boat, when did it settle? I need a light at the end of the tunnel!
Today he hasn't had anything to eat since 2am and won't take anything at all although he's grumpy and obviously hungry.

[wintertravel1980]

NewMum - it is supposed to get much better at 12 months (I know - it is a long wait) but things might improve when babies start eating solids.

My DD had pretty bad reflux at 6-8 weeks. Medications (ranitidine) + anti-reflux milk eventually helped but with ranitidine you do need to increase the dose (the maximum is 3mg per 1kg of baby weight per day - you will then need to convert it into mls).

Anti-reflux milk in my case worked much better than gaviscon.

A stronger medication would be omeprazole but we didn't need to go there.

I weaned DD at 4 months which helped as well. Solids are not brought up as easily as liquids so reflux gets better.

[NewMumSept2014]

Thanks. He's on about 2mg/kg at the minute so I'm going to try increasing a bit to see if that helps. Tried him with some solids yesterday and he was doing quite well so will persist with that too. The current situation means that he's just feeding to sleep all the time which isn't great in the long term but necessary at the moment. Like I said I just feel like my life revolves around trying to force milk into him. I know it'll get better but it's so hard!

[ColdFeetWarmHeart]

My DD's reflux started at 4 weeks. It was horrendous. If she drank 6oz then 5 came back up. And she screamed A LOL!!
Improved as soon as I started her on foods. If I started the day off giving her a bit of baby porridge before her bottle shed keep down a lot more and didn't scream. Would also give her a little baby porridge just before night time bottle. Again helped keep more down.

The first stage porridge is from 4 months. Have you tried DS on any yet??

[fabulous01]

Have you been referred to specialist dietician. I had twins with bad reflux and both ended up on neocate. It was fab
Also get baby on the dummy. Consultant always said it was good for their tummy
But keep pushing your healt visitor. Some people swear by the cranial osteograph but for me the formula worked
Good luck. It was a nightmare

[wintertravel1980]

Like I said I just feel like my life revolves around trying to force milk into him.

Yes, I know exactly what you are saying:(. I felt exactly the same and I was dreading every feed. I was the only one who could feed my DD back then. With me, she screamed, arched her back, cried but still drank (little by little). With DH, she simply refused to take the bottle. It was really hard but it eventually got better.

I wouldn't worry about feeding to sleep at all. In theory, I am pro-sleep training, pro-getting rid of sleep associations but it all goes out of the window when the baby is struggling (with reflux, teething, etc). What matters is getting calories into your LO. You can always deal with his sleep later when he gets better.

[MapMyMum]

I can really empathise with you, my youngest had silent reflux and it is very stressful and time consuming. I weaned him onto solids at about 4 months as suggested by the PHN and he fell into a routine of not taking much during the day then taking a huge bottle of formula before bed and falling asleep on the bottle. Id keep him upright for the half an hour then lie him down in the cot propped up at the head end. He took sma staydown formula with colief in it to soften his stools
Keep strong and talk to the dr again and insist on upping or changing medicines etc if needs be. Sometimes they can be quite blasé about reflux

[NewMumSept2014]

THanks all, he's just on normal aptamil at the moment and I haven't tried any other formulas. I've never heard of neocate, any experience of the reflux aptamil? I haven't seen gp or anyone else about it for a while- he really didn't seem very interested.
Winter- that's exactly the same as DS! He'll take it for me (only in the dark, if he's in his sleeping bag, and only in the bedroom) but won't take anything for DH or MIL at all. It means I can go out but I know he'll be playing catch up half the night.
Think it's time to try and push the solids to see if that helps.

[fabulous01]

My health visitor referred us. I have twins so at a visit which always took a while she asked if this was normal. I said yes. She said it wasn't and that started it. That was at about a month. Neocate was amazing. One was on it from start and the other nutremogen but then got changed to neocate. It is all related to intolerances which was important for us when weening. Doctors were no good. My advice is to push for dietician referral as you could have more problems with weening. Mine weren't intolerant to dairy but we had to treat them as if they were which meant close monitoring and dietician advice