Breast or bottle and reflux

[toomuchtooyoung]

My near 6 week old DD has been on gaviscon for just over a week now. Have noticed some improvement to her reflux (pain rather than vomiting) and thought we'd cracked it with a combination of lying her on her left hand side, for everything, and putting a dummy in after a feed, but yesterday she was in agony again.

Am beginning to question the benefits of breastfeeding if I am just filling her up with whatever chemicals are in gaviscon. Apart from the fact that breastmilk is easier to digest are there other reasons not to try some of these formulas that are supposed to help reflux babies. Would any of these formulas help more during her worst time between 4 and 8 pm? The only way I can get the gaviscon into her is by mixing with some breastmilk and in a bottle halfway through a feed, which is not exactly following the instructions but MW said not to worry as long as it gets in

Also, whilst i'm here, apart from spicy foods is there anything I should be avoiding?

Have you tried cutting out all forms of dairy in your own diet? Dairy intolerance and reflux often go hand-in-hand, and the dairy that you eat can affect the baby.

BTW 'Dairy' being any form of milk or milk-derived food, not eggs (I've never understood why people consider eggs 'dairy').

You've done really well to keep breastfeeding so far! It is upsetting to go through what you are going through. It is worth trying the dairy-exclusion for a few weeks, because if rhe reflux is related to a dairy intolerance then going onto a cowsmilk-derived formula is going to make things worse in the long run.

The dairy exclusion diet could show results within days, but it could also take as long as 3w, so you would need to persevere with it to know for sure whether it is effective.

HTH

I mixed the gaviscon in 5ml rather than the recommended 15ml which made it thicker but still liquid enough to syringe in. Fed before the feed not after, because I found my DS so hated it he would pass out with exhaustion screaming after each administration of Gav. That helped. Eventually though I asked for rinitidine - feeding gaviscon at every feed was too tough when demand BFing up to 12 times a day, for us anyway. The rinitidine is just a 1.2ml morning and night. It did take three weeks to work though, during which time I needed to keep up the gaviscon and gradually wean him off towards the end. Lots of good advice on cryingoverspiltmilk site.

My Ds had reflux, and was prem so we have all sorts of medical help, most of which advised that in almost all cases BF was better for reflux babies symptoms than formula. I'm actually all for formula in certain circumstances eg prem babies often need higher calorie food than BF, but beware that often switching to formual makes reflux worse and its very hard to switch back.

We found using Gaviscon was a suck-it-and-see thing really - take the instructions with a pinch of salt (not literally! ) and use it however works best for you.

I'd say BF is way better for refluxy or colicky babies than using formula of any kind - remember it's just treated cows milk at the end of the day, so especially if the reflux is linked to a dairy intolerance you're miles better persevering with BF - I know mixing the Gaviscon up is a pain - I used to long to be able to just dump it in a bottle rather than express and syringe it in, but now I'm past that stage (about 5 months for us) I'm so glad I stuck with it - I can only imagine how much worse his reflux could have been if we'd been using formula.

Good luck, you'll have a lot of sympathy on here - many of us have been through the same...

Thanks everyone. Will cut out the dairy from today (bar the toast I just had) and see if that helps. Have a cranial osteo appt today too so will see if she can suggest anything, mind you it didn't seem to do anything when we thought it was just wind.

Will also see if dr will prescribe the twice daily meds

BM is an antacid! Here is loads of good advice on dealing with reflux in babies.

DD1 had really bad reflux and was not gaining weight. We were given Gaviscon but that did nothing but cause her to poo small bricks! We went on to domperidone which works by speeding up the passage of food through the gut (it's not in the stomach long enough to be sicked out ) which meant she actually gained weight properly. She feed like a demon though with feeds lasting up to 1hr 45mins on a 2 hourly cycle (so 15 mins off. She did grow out of it by about 12m/o though.

If you do cut out dairy I believe it will take about 2 weeks for all the dairy proteins to get out of your system but I'd check Kellymom to get the best advice on elimination diets.