well I hope I'm not boring anyone by telling the story and I may get things a bit out of order due to me forgetting a lot (I KNOW, believe me, you can get to that place!)
well she was born and was a screamer straight away. Was pretty clear there was something wrong in the first hour. Midwives totally unhelpful . She was breast fed but was dreadfully dreadfully sick and in pain. She had hideous eczema, especially on her face. Doctors didn't help at all and just prescribed gaviscon and told me to get on with it. I had to go back to work when she was 4 months and it was when I tried to get her onto the bottle that the problems started.
Tried her on sma and the minute it touched her lips, her lips swelled up and she became covered in welts. Health visitor advised we tried Wysoy and the same happened. Went to the doctor and he prescribed nutramigen. A week on the nutramigen and her eczema completely cleared up (was unbelievable - it was red raw on her face).
She still had dreadful reflux and we couldn't put her down until an hour after every feed! And even then, she barely slept.
Then we started weaning and it was a disaster. She reacted to so many things and I went back to the doctor and begged for help. The doctors had a right go at me for cutting milk/soya out of her diet with no proof of allergy (grr) but thankfully, referred her to a paediatrician who did allergy tests and found she had milk/soya/egg allergy and bad reflux. She had other allergies that popped up but were put down to immature digestive system.
She went to nursery but they fed her milk and she ended up in hospital. By now, I had ds and he had reflux and was in hospital with breathing problems and I gave up work as they needed full time help!
I had to stop weaning and go back completely to the start. So at something silly like 9 months, we cut everything out and started again with carrot!
Her reflux still hadn't improved and all that happened now was that her sick was full of food and milk rather than just milk. Her teeth that came through were totally ruined by all the vomiting (enamel eroded).
As she started moving around, her stomach started strengthening and at about 15 months, it started improving and she started sleeping (hooray!).
Roll forward, we had the milk allergy tested (food challenge) at 1 (still there), 2 (still there) and finally at 2.5 she outgrew it. They said if dairy had gone, soya would be fine. Egg was still there and potentially looking a lot worse so we had to be careful with that.
As she has got older, the reflux affects her in that she can vomit at the drop of a hat. Any cold or congestion results in vomiting. Her teeth are a mess and she gets a v nervous stomach (probably because she can get nauseous v easily). But we don't make a big deal out of it.
I have reflux too and am on omeprazole permantetly so we are a house of refluxers! I make sure she doesn't over eat...if she ever has a glass of something like chocolate milk she will immediately feel sick because she can't bear (nor can I), the heavy feeling of heavy liquid (like milk) in her tummy!