Silent Reflux -- help x

[Natzer]

Sorry, I suspect this topic has been done to death, I have read through some previous threads.

I am convinced my 9 week old dd has silent reflux, she always has hiccups if you put her down within about 30 mins of a feed, she has started jumping about and arching her back whilst feeding, she sleeps on her side, back arched and hands pressed on face. She doesn't sleep very well. She also has wet burps, and cries alot in the morning.

The GP gave us gavisgon and it worked perfectly, for 2 nights she slept beautifully, on her back, hands either side of her head and slept for about 10 hours solid. However, she then became very very constipated, she was in such distress and we give her so much water already as she was getting constipated before the gavisgon. So we stopped giving it to her.

As its saturday I am trying her on aptamil comfort until I can get a GP appt next week in the hope that will help as its thicker.

But what next?

TIA

get a referral to paed if you need to in order to rule out any other problem. dd is on ranitidine and has a cow's milk protein allergy. GP said there was nothing wrong and gaviscon was all we needed but the constipation was awful, took us until 24 weeks to get the paed appointment and a diagnosis. randitidine helped lots, still have some of the symptoms (coughing, hiccups, etc as you describe) but they don't seem to cause discomfort any more (the acid is lessened). For us the symptoms started around 7 weeks and by 10 weeks we were totally distraught.

I only got help for DD's silent reflux when I got in touch with the hospital infant feeding adviser. She phoned the GP and told him what to prescribe and that really eased things. Push to get help :)

Gaviscon bound up my boys so we used/use very weak fruit juice to get things moving and were also prescribed Movicol too, which worked very well. Please please see a paediatrician though. Things improved for us immeasurably once we got the doses of domperidone sorted, and started weaning. I was horrified when our paed suggested weaning at 13 weeks but he was right, things got a LOT better after that.

My DS2 had this until he was gone 2.

You can get better medication than gaviscon. A combination of ranitidine and domperidone. Definitely go to your gp to get it sorted out.

Have you raised up the head of the cot? Be bought cot blocks for this- but you could use a couple of books. Not too high, but sleeping flat will make it worse.

Also, if you don't already have one, get a sling. For some daft reason we never did and DH and I used to take it in shifts to stand up with him during the evening.

Ds2 could only sleep on his side and this was recommended by one of the nurses while he was in hospital. Obviously it is a personal decision to do that- we bought an apnea monitor in the end so I could put him on his side. He literally couldn't sleep on his back and I would never of slept without it.

What Peg said, totally. My boys still sleep with the cot tipped but when things were really bad they slept overnight in their bouncy chairs! Not ideal but they were obviously much more comfortable when tilted! And the slings are defo a good idea, I use my Close sling, and thankfully it goes in the wash easily, often soaked in sick!