Winding a reflux baby

[twinkleymum]

How do you do it? I find that when I bring up the wind, the milk follows. Especially after the late morning feed. When DD2 pulls off the breast (she's 6 wks) she cries, not sure if from reflux or wind. I wind her and out comes the feed. In fact everytime she comes off the breast or wakes up from sleep she cries, is this normal. Most babies seem to come up from feeding or sleeping in a good mood. Any advice or thoughts?

Forgot to say I'm using gaviscon, not sure its making any difference though.

I have 13 week old reluxy DS also on Gaviscon - we often have a 'burp then vomit' pattern, and the only thing I've found that helps is to wind ever so gently, just very gently rubbing his back - I just hold him sitting up very straight sometimes and try and let the wind find its way out gradually, even if he's basically asleep but held upright.

I think it's hard to tell with reflux babies if pain after feeding is acidic reflux making its way back up, or wind. All of the normal quite active things that we do to get wind up, like rolling them around, lying them down etc, would just aggravate reflux, if that is the problem. So it's v hard to know what to do!

If it helps, my DS used to come off screaming after every feed, but this was before we had the reflux diagnosis and started using IG. Took a few days to change his behaviour though - I think he might have started to associate feeding with pain, which is a miserable thought. My baby also cries when he wakes if he's waking cos of hunger - I personally wouldn't worry about that one too much...I guess you're already putting your refluxy baby down on a propped up mattress, so their head is higher than their feet?

There is a reflux support thread on here, and there are folk with more experience than me on it who can prob help more. And some of them have had no luck with Gaviscon but have with other medicines.

Yes I've propped the mattress. I'm not using the maximum dose of IG as it seems to give her constipation. I've been giving it after the 2 morning feeds, one afternoon and one evening. I've only been using one sachet as she is just over 10lb now, do you think I should use 2 sachets on the morning feeds to try and keep milk down during winding? These feeds are the ones that come back up the most. In the evening she keeps them down better but I think that may be because she feeds little amounnts very frequently all evening.

It does seem like she vomits so soon after feeding that the gaviscon doesn't get chance to work.

rub in circles quite firmly moving upwards but dont pat or slap her back. make sure baby is high on your shoulder so that their tummy is resting against your shoulder (the pressure on the tummy is soothing apparently).

HTH.

twinkleymum, I don't know how much I can help - we seem to have similar problems! Gaviscon does give my DS constipation, and we try and 'underdose' to avoid this as much as possible. I know what you mean about the Gaviscon 'bounce' - I give some doses only to see them reappear seconds later, and clearly they haven't had time to do much.

I don't know how you dose - it's hard with a BF baby, because you can't mix in a certain amount 'per feed',like you can with a bottle. What I do is make up a sachet (approx 3 teaspoonfuls), and then use a small syringe to syringe feed DS about a teaspoon, or 5 mls, whenever I can during a feed. (DS takes breaks, so I try and get in there with a quick squirt when he's off the boob). This seems to work better than waiting until he's at the end of a feed, chockfull to brimming, then trying to get the full 3 teaspoons in. Which can often reappear very quickly.

The small syringe approach also means that if we get a small-ish vomit after a feed, I can give DS another syringeful straight away, and hopefully keep the rest of the feed down.

I seem to remember someone on the reflux thread giving some gaviscon before a feed.... I've never tried this, as I wouldn't want to dose DS, and then find he didn't want to feed after all, IYSWIM. But it's an idea.

Sorry not to be more help - it is a difficult and frustrating condition to manage, I really do sympathise.

My DD is breastfed and on IG and I just don't wind her unless she's showing signs of needing it. So if she starts squirming during a feed I'll take her off and sit her up/put on my shoulder. Otherwise I leave her to it and just sit her upright after the feed. She tends to bring up wind quite easily if she needs to. I'm sure I've read that you don't need to routinely wind a breastfed baby cos they don't take in much air.

On the other hand, if there's wind in there and milk on top I'm not sure how one can come up without the other.

Our 10wo has silent reflux so we don't have the vomiting, but all the pain, back arching, screaming, acid burps, choking etc - oh joy. She's BF & on IG with varying degrees of success. At times it's like flipping a switch - if she's had quite a big feed and then takes the whole dose, with just a quick slurp of BM to fnish off, she smiles, sighs and then sleeps - usually on a shoulder otherwise she's really restless. That's pretty rare though. Other feeds are more 'bitty' so knowing when to put the IG in is tricky, and often less successful. We broadly aim for IG at feeds around breakfast, lunch, tea and bed times, as there's no real feeding routine as yet - she obviously feeds much more often than that. We dropped the 3am IG fairly quickly as it seemed to make things worse not better. We rarely get a good burp out of her by trying! She often 'relaxes' one out if we stop rubbing/patting her. One HV told us to persist 'for at least 10 minutes' with winding, but DD just gets more wound up and distressed, and we're exhausted. I liked another HV's advice much better - winding is a very British/Western habit - other cultures are not obsessed by burping and leave children to 'self wind', only intervening if they seem to need it. Not sure if this is good advice for a vomiter (hope that's not offensive) but works for us.