Harder poos with gaviscon

[Olive96]

My daughter is 7 weeks and was recently prescribed gaviscon for reflux. It's working great on the reflux symptoms but has given her poos a paste like consistency, she's EBF so before gaviscon they were very runny.
She seems to be struggling to pass the harder poos, she's crying a lot until she manages to get it out - is this just something she needs to get used to? Does anyone have experience of this and is it case of carrying on with the gaviscon and letting her get used to the bowel movements? I'm apprehensive to stop the gaviscon as she was miserable with the reflux so the painful pooing is a lesser of two evils, but obviously ideally she wouldnt be struggling at all. Any tips would be massively appreciated!

It's common for things that stop reflux to cause constipation, at a young age. The little ones stomachs are not ready to break down other things.

We used anti-reflux milk for the reflux which again due to the thickness, cause constipation but did stop the reflux. We then had the same problem and found a tiny amount of lactulose (About half a ml) every 2 days, stopped most of the constipation.

Make sure to speak to a doctor or health adviser first, I wouldn't advise trying two types of medicine at such a young age without professional advice.

My DD has the same, we used to call them clay poops.

We used 3/4 of a the recommended dose of gavsicon sometimes, it was still horrible but we had to as like yours, she was in more pain from the reflux than the constipation.

We did often help her poo before it got to the point of her getting really upset with the constipation. We googled various ways to do that and what worked best was a cotton bud covered in Vaseline, we had to put it about a cm into her anus (VERY gently) and twist it around a few times and that never failed. Again not much fun for anyone involved but it gave her a lot of relief.

Sorry if that was a bit TMI

Hope she feels better.

My DS had the same problem. We still not sure if its reflux thats causing him problem. GP suggested to try gaviscon but it made no difference but made his poop very hard. So we stopped gaviscon and trying to keep him upright for 30-40 mins after every feed.

Thank you for the suggestions! Just as an update for anyone else with this issue. We halved the dose and gave an extra 5ml of cooled boiled water each time and that seems to have got things moving for now.

@MrsWolf2 will remember the cotton bud trick if she's ever backed up again! The things we do for them!!