curing constipation in EBF gaviscon baby.

[MotherPanda]

I've had a good rummage through the archives but can't find exactly what i need so thought I'd ask again.

My 16/17week old EBF DD has reflux and has been on infant gaviscon since she was 6 weeks old, she hasn't done a normal poo for the last 11 weeks - they are all very big and hard and i have to help her to poo (pushing on her bum etc as she goes). I've tried reducing the dose of gaviscon she has, but we just get more acidy sick and screaming.

so what can i do to loosen up her poos and help her go on her own?

I've heard about using OJ - which i don't want to try as its acidic (more acid is not what we need!)

any experience of using brown sugar/ prune juice in a 4 month old baby? isn't it dangerous to give things diluted in water to a breast fed baby? Are there any extra risks, as i know early weaning isn't reccomended before 6 months.

if i went down the sugar/pune juice route - could i mix it with expressed breast milk, (i currently use ebm for all her gaviscon feeds) how much?

thanks, sorry its a bit babbly.

My baby had the exact same problem we gave him 10ml of gripe water after every feed and he soon exploded!

Really? I used to give infacol before each feed, but she doesnt need it to burp now - thinking about it i think it has been harder for her to go since i stopped that.

will try a bit of that, although i don't want to overdose!

Unfortunately for DD1 the cure to gaviscon constipation was stopping the gaviscon and moving on to domperidone (which for DD1 actually did something apart from make her poo bricks!).

Has your paed/GP discussed other options for treating reflux at all? I would be very leary about giving other foods to a young baby in an attempt to make them poo. Surely the gaviscon would have to be given at the same time otherwise they might reflux it back up (negating the point of the juice?).

FYI gripe water and infacol are very different substances so I'm not at all sure they would have the same effect.

infacol often makes reflux worse. Sorry I don't know the answer to your question as dd didn't react like that but I thought I should warn re infacol.

put some ky jelly around dd's bum.

i had to get some latolose from the gp for dd, also did rub her belly everytime she tried to do a poo

in the end we ditched the gaviscon and got something else from gp

There is another tactic if you've not looked into it, which is that reflux symptoms are often caused not by reflux, but cow's milk protein intolerance.

It might be worth trying to remove ALL TRACES of cow's milk from your diet, which means scrutinising every packet for things like "casein" as well as anything remotely connected with cow's milk. Booja Booja chocolate is excellent (which of course is the main thing you'll need to substitute ). Watch out for spreads as things like Flora have butter in. You need something like True-Free from Sainsburys, or Vitalite dairy-free.

Alternatives to try are rice milk, which works in tea (for me) and I love on cereal - and it makes gorgeous porridge. Oat milk, again good for cereal. Soya is a possibility but best to avoid as it can also trigger a reaction.

To see if it helps you need to remove it completely for 2 weeks.

If it helps, you should be able to either stop the Gaviscon completely, or dramatically reduce it (or move to a different drug).

I Very Highly recommend NOT giving anything such as orange or prune juice as it is not safe for their stomachs. Really, something like lactulose would be much better (provided the GP agrees - they may suggest something else) but even then ideally if you can remove the cause (the Gaviscon) you're not treating the side effects caused by the treatment.

Hope this helps. If the symptoms are caused by CMP intolerance it will make a huge difference. If not, it won't!

One other consideration is tongue tie which has been linked to reflux symptoms. Are you having any other BFing difficulties such as sore nipples?

My twins are on Domperidone, Ranitidine and Gaviscon, they were really constipated until we introduced Infacol as they also have terrible problems with trapped wind. An unexpected side effect was that it has totally cured the constipation and its had no effect on the reflux.

I found a way through this with DS - which was to eat lots of porridge and oat flapjacks myself. Anything I ate came out one end of DS anyway - usually the inappropriate end all over everything ( I wore stinking t-shirts over my clothes for months). It was my sister who told me this, told her by the Swiss/German medical crews. She was told that if she wanted to get the little dcs to sleep, she should drink a nice non acidic drink - eg sweet sherry - 3/4 hour before feeding; she should gnerally eat bland stuff but if they were constipated she should look at her own intake of roughage. I found it worked. When I had finally worked out that anything with bubbles (mineral water, champagne), acid (strawberries, melon cabbage) cauased mega stress -trapped wind, ickyness (DS was sick for 9 months) I also learned the oats lesson by chance and the initial result was surprising, revolting and embarrassing .

But I wish I had known about cows milk.

Thanks everyone - will give the juices amiss then. Very interesting about the oats helping, I do love my flapjacks.

I had thought about the cows milk problem - there is a bit of cows milk/ lactose intolerance in the family. I tried drinking goats milk for a couple of weeks but didn't notice any difference, but I didn't eliminate all milk traces from my diet.

I'm reluctant to try the other drugs because gaviscon works! I had heard that the other drugs don't stop the sick, but treat the acid. Is this true?

Domperidone works by speeding up the transist of food in the gut (it moves the milk out of their tummy quicker so they don't get as much chance to be sick). I think rantidine (sp?) works by suppressing the acid production as does Losec MUPS.