Anyone use nutramigen?

[canmummy]

I went to see paediatrician over 2 weeks ago and he said he'd write to my gp to ask them to prescribe this.

Trouble is, his secretary is on holiday so no letter has arrived at the dr's yet and they don't know whether to prescribe nutramigen 1 or nutramigen 2.

I can't get hold of anyone to ask at the hospital and am at the end of my tether trying to get her a formula milk. Even just rang dr's again to see if letter arrived and it's closed for training!!!!

Does anyone know what the difference is?

ps - am really just asking out of interest and frustration. I'm not going to demand it from my gp without proper medical advice

I'm pretty sure Nutramigen 2 is the 'follow on' type one for over a year old.

Hi

I was prescribed Nutramigen 1 for DS2 as a baby it then changed to Nutramigen 2 when she was about 9 months.

The tin in front of me says suitable from 6 months.

Hope this helps.

If you are prescribed a couple of tips:

Ask your GP for a prescription which gives enough tins to last a month (bear in mind these are smaller than the average tins of formula),my GP used to give me about 10. it will save on trips to the pharmacy.

Ring your pharmacy ahead of collection and ask them if they have enough for your prescription (they usually only hold 1 or 2(, if not ask if they can order it for you - again it saves on trips.

oh yeah, this stuff tastes and smells awful. Best to introduce it gradually!!!(for an 8oZ bottle start with one scoop nutramigen and 7 normal and increase the nutramigen scoops by one and reducing the formula by one every few days so baby doesn't notice the difference so much (it might well put them off for life!!)

Thanks sb! It's really only for nursery and things like cereal as she's breastfed at the moment but I'm struggling keeping up with expressing. My prescriptions go direct to the chemist next door so assume the same will happen for lo.

You've made me think, maybe I could ask the pharmacist for advice and the gp would take it from them?

I'd check you lo will take nutramigen first before ordering loads. My dd took it fine when she was 3mo and then we had a break from it and she would, under no circumstances, let a drop of it pass her lips after that. In fact it put her off bottles altogether. We tried Neocate and then Pepti after that. The Pepti is certainly the most palatable out of all of them, but they all smell of potato starch to me!

canmummy, did you get your lo to drink the nutramigen? Have tried mine on it since he was about 2 months' old and he has never gone near the stuff!

When I started using Nutramigen, on the advice of the peadiatrician, we started using one scoop and the rest normal formula for the first week. Week 2 two scoops etc decreasing the amount of normal formula gradually.

worked for me !!

But wouldn't that mean giving the baby normal milk (which I assume, if on Nutramigen, they shouldn't have)?
My ds is totally bf so didn't have the normal formula to start with.. is that the difference?

It does mean giving the baby normal milk for a short time but it gets the baby used to the awful taste. It seems to be a common problem because the peadiatrician didn't seem to think the baby would take it if we just introduced it suddenly.

You could try the same method but use breast milk instead of formula.

my daughter is a few weeks away from turning 1 but she is still on nutramigen 1, i have asked the doctors if she should be on stage 2 but they dont seem 2 no, my health visitor doesnt no either.
I recently met a lady in hospital when my daughter was in for another problem as she has a brain condition and her son was also on nutramigen as a baby but she was told nutramigen 2 was only used for children who didnt eat solids!? sorry to make this all so long winded but i dont no who else to ask. im happy just to put her on goats milk when shes 1 but just wondered if anyone else had the same problem??

teairrasmummy, could you ask for a referral to a dietitian? Sounds like their area of expertise.

Poor you - Nutramigen is grim stuff but son went from hating it to loving it so fingers crossed for you. Our GP forgot to move him onto Nutramigen two - but he was supposed to have it at 1 yr I think but didn't get it until he was 2 years! I emailed the Nutramigen people off the side of the tin to check. What I didn't know is that it still has a bit of milk protein in it - it is not fully hydrolised (?) apparently and he developed a reaction to that too. We are now in Neocate which is better but more expensive for them I think. We are having problems with him now tho after months of reacting to supposedly safe formula so be aware. Hope it works for you. Good luck.

My other children call it 'stinky milk', but it's a godsend. My youngest wouldn't touch it, then one night suddenly drank a whole bottle and hasn't looked back.

Up until that point i'd been on a strict exclusion diet as i was breastfeeding (she's egg, dairy and nut allergic). Most of her eczema and chest infections/wheezing had cleared up, there was just a bit of eczema left on her hands. She switched to Nutramigen, (nutramigen2) and voila, the eczema on her hands disappeared.

So even tho it stinks it does the job!

Good luck with it...could you buy a tin from the pharmacy until the letter arrives? or have i not followed the story properly? ;-)
Pigx

Hello to another pig and everyone else on this v useful thread! My nearly 6 month old DD (and first baby) has just been diagnosed with a milk intolerance having been on ever-increasing amounts of formula for the past month to 6 weeks. I was planning to continue BF until at least 6 months but she had been having a bottle of expressed milk since she was a week old in the evening so that my DH could be more involved. I also used to express madly when my mother-in-law etc was staying as she was so keen to get involved with feeding. Stupidly I introduced faster flowing teats to the bottle at around 4 months and spent the next few weeks fighting with a baby who just didn't seem interested in BF anymore. Every time I tried she screamed and arched her back and thrashed around except for her first morning feed when she was truly hungry. I have never tried so hard in my life to keep at it but she just wouldn't feed from me anymore though was clearly hungry and guzzled the bottle of expressed milk when i did finally cave in for a couple of feeds. Eventually I could not take expressing all day in order to spend even more time feeding her by bottle so introduced formula gradually (i regret this utterly now and feel so guilty that my selfishness over having time to myself led to this decision). A couple of weeks in, the eczema set in and spread all over her body, arms & legs, scalp and chin. I had mild eczema as a child and my husband has hay fever so I was not altogether surprised that she had such a sensitivity though did not unfortunately pin it down to the formula straight away as it happened at the same time that her clothes were washed in a new washing powder. That is until this weekend when she got a stomach bug and lots of D & V. I defrosted all the breastmilk I still had in the freezer and fed her only that for 24 hours to try to make her feel better. Guess what - all that horrendous eczema disappeared OVER NIGHT - extraordinary. It seemed like the breastmilk was the magic (holy?) water in the grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - instantaneous healer of all wounds!! Anyway, needless to say the eczema has come back now that we are back on formula (I have tried to express again to get my milk supply up once more but am only managing to produce about 50ml a day which is pathetic and not anywhere near enough. I am inclined to persevere though - does anyone have any advice on /experience of trying to build up milk supply again having nearly stopped BF entirely??). The doctor prescribed Nutramigen yesterday (though both he and the HV were pretty hopeless at coming up with this as a possible solution - the HV just kept saying that I shouldn't have stopped BF...not v helpful when I am feeling so awful about it anyway!). The worst is that DD REFUSES to drink the Nutramigen. It's hot, she's hungry AND thirsty I imagine and so she just cries and cries and sleeps inbetween and is only soothed by the dummy i thought I had managed to get her to forget about several weeks ago! Honestly (even allowing for my natural bias!) she is usually one of the happiest, smiliest babies around who has always eaten and slept easily with no bowel trouble so I have found all of this really distressing.... so... I just did give her a bottle with half formula and half Nutramigen about an hour ago and she guzzled the lot even though my HV told me that I absolutely MUST NOT give her any more formula. I am working on the assumption that her need for food/liquid is greater than her need to be rid of eczema RIGHT THIS MINUTE and that if doing a mixed feed helps us to get her onto the Nutramigen exclusively in the end then this is the lesser of two evils. Anybody got any thoughts / recent experience to share? How quickly can I afford to up the amount of Nutramigen in each bottle (we are on 50:50 now so I guess that is a hopeful start)? How quickly can I hope to see an improvement in the eczema? That is if you've managed to get to the end of this endless ramble...so sorry but hoping to get some advice since I have no faith whatsoever in my local health professionals on this subject....

Hi there!

I'm OP and surprised to see this thread resurrected!

I did eventually get the nutramigen for dd but getting her to take it was another story! I mixed expressed milk with the nutramigen to try and get her used to it.

Then one day I went out (in a bit of a huff I have to say) and left no milk for dh to feed her with . So he put a splash of apple juice in the bottle to sweeten it and she drank it no problem! The dietician did raise his eyebrows at this though....

As for building up supply of breastmilk - just offer it a lot and often. I stopped for a few days quite often (but around the 12 month mark) and then changed my mind and re-established it ok.

Hope it works out ok

We tried nutramigen for ds but he hated it. HV suggested Soya milk and its worked a treat, he loves it. His skin has improved too.

You can get it on prescription if kid won't take anything else, also you can buy it in powdered form at supermarket - SMA WYSOY - green tin

Smells and tastes much nicer than neocate or nutramigen

Hi there, our son is almost 2 years and they only gave him nutramigen 2 last week. I am not entirely satisfied, he seems to digest it less well. Honestly, if your child eats solids anyway, I don't think that there is a big difference between nutramigen 1 and 2.

Hi there, our son is almost 2 years and they only gave him nutramigen 2 last week. I am not entirely satisfied, he seems to digest it less well. Honestly, if your child eats solids anyway, I don't think that there is a big difference between nutramigen 1 and 2.

Our paediatrician said Nutramigen 2 for over 6 months. I was trying not to use it (still BFing and had hoped to get away without the faff of using formula even before the CMP allergy raised its ugly head), but the paediatrician said that the longer we left it, the less likely my DD would be to take it. So she first had it at about 7 months and seems fine with it. I think we're lucky with the timing in that she started weaning a couple of weeks or so before this, and so is used to different tastes etc being introduced. She didn't seem at all fussed on it from a bottle but TBH I'm quite happy with that. I'm not using it as a substitute for breastfeeds, she just has it in cereal or in cooking, or occasionally a little bit as a drink out a sippy cup, so we won't have to worry about weaning her off a bottle.

this is a very old thread from nov 2007 that has been re opened but answered a question i was thinking about any way!

Hi sorry to resurrect this thread yet again! It seems that there is far more info on this forum about nutramigen than any one of the supposed "health professionals" seem to have!

My LO is on nutramigen 1 for possible cows milk allergy but although his reflux has pretty much disappeared, he seems to struggle with pooing on this formula. Although he poos about twice a day, it is hard and compact and he seems to struggle whilst it is passing thru his bowels - leg pumping, groaning and grunting as if severe constipation. I noticed someone above mentioned that nutramigen fed babies need more water. (although when i mentioned to the doctor, he looked at me blankly!) I often have to calm my LO between feeds as he is in pain/discomfort so started given him a bottle of water thinking it would soothe him and help with the bowel problem. He drinks it thirstily and it stops him crying. Does anyone have any experience of this or can confirm that extra water is a neccessity on nutramigen? Also, my doctor prescribed our LO with nutramigen AA today, to see if this would make digestion easier and less painful ffor him. Aparently it has NO COWS MILK PROTEIN in it at all, as it is entirely amino acid based. Havent tried it yet. Has anyone else used it and if so any experiences to share?

TBH I would ask about switching your DS to another formula like neocate.

Although if this new formula has no cows milk protein in it it might work.

DD (2.6) is on neocate and has been since she was 8mths and her pooing was just as you describe but she was on soya milk (wysoy) and we noticed a difference straight away on neocate.