Feed on-demand? Or change tack?

[stopgap]

My DS is fourteen weeks and EBF (apart from three or four bottles of expressed milk per week). He has had a tough time with his stomach right from the beginning, with colic leading to silent reflux, and a blend of colic/green stools/excess gas the last ten days. I'm lactose intolerant, so no dairy to forego.

After a hellish weekend, we purchased a brand of gripe water that's about 95% effective. DS naturally fell into a longer pattern of 2.5-3 hour feeds yesterday, which meant he was symptomless, but this evening he did three feedings over the course of three hours, and his symptoms came back with a bang (though less intense than previous).

Up until this point, I've fed on-demand. My question is this: is it prudent to on-demand feed the baby with reflux? My heart says persist with on-demand feeding, but my head tells me otherwise, as it appears spacing out feedings is less demanding on his digestive system.

At his age would definitely carry on feeding on demand to make sure your supply meets his demand. It sounds as though he is trying to increase your supply and, once he does, his feedings will naturally space out and become more manageable for him again. You are doing an amazing job!

I ff my 19wk ds but I still (on paed's advice) still demand feed. From a ff POV it means a lot of wasted milk but he gets into such a state if I make him wait and excessive crying can lead to extra acid too.

Reflux seems (to me) to be one loooong round of catch-22 like situations, so I just try to go with the flow (as it were!) and do whatever seems necessary at that moment!

If you come over to the reflux thread there'll be loads of bf'ers with some advice for you.

Good point buttonmoon - feeding on demand is desirable whatever the feeding method with a baby this young.

Shall carry on then, especially as he's only waking once overnight to feed. Thanks!

Only once?

Carry on as you are. Sounds like you're doing a grand job.

Buttonmoon, this is a new thing. Prior to the new gripe water, he was waking four or five times a night, but only because his stomach was hurting. Now that's under control a bit, he has his one long feed at midnight and goes right back to dreamland :)

I'm bumping this up, as the diarrhea from last week has returned and now it's dark green. My DS seems to be in great discomfort most of his waking hours. His doctor said it's developmentala severe case of colicbut had little to say beyond that. I suspect allergies. Case in point: I've been using a new body lotion, and wondered why DS was breaking out in little red dots all over his face after a feeding, only to discover the body lotion's second ingredient was soy protein. This comes after I eliminated (my favourite) chocolate soy protein bars, because it was obvious they caused him a problem.

Should I insist my paed refers us to an allergist, or should I try cutting out yet more things from my diet? Or just sod it all and switch to a hypoallergenic formula? I am finding the near-constant screaming, fussing and writhing from my son hard to deal with, and it kills me to see him in pain.

OP this came up a few days ago but I don't know the answer - is lactose intolerance something that can be passed down? If so, while LI in babies is VV rare, I wonder whether it could be the problem?

If so rather than going to HA formula (which is gross) it may be worth trying some lactase meds first?

As organic says, LI in bf babies is very rare, but does manifest itself pretty much from birth. It can be linked with other allergies. There's some good info about it on Kellymom.

Are you eating any other soy in your diet? If you've never tried excluding it before it's amazing how much is in random stuff e.g. bread.

Apparently about 60% of children who have cows milk protein intolerance are also intolerant/allergic to soya so there is some possibility of that causing problems.

The spots on the face sound more like an allergy to me than an intolerance, which would suggest something like soya allergy rather than LI.

You could also try asking on the Allergies board on here for more experience.

If you're going down the hypoallergenic formula route make sure you get it on prescription. If we were to pay it would cost more per month than our mortgage!

I would be pushing for an appointment with an allergist.

Since we started weaning we've discovered that ds is allergic to fruit (not sure whether just apples and pears or fructose or what). Our paed has been nothing but ultra helpful. It's a real shame that all paeds are not the same.

I hope you get some answers soon.

Have you tried colief? It's a bit of a faff if you are breast feeding, but worth a shot if the problem is an inability to deal with lactose and youd like to keep on BFing rather than switching to formuls. I hand express about 1/2 an oz of milk into a bottle (v quick once you get the hang of it) add in the drops and feed it back to baby then carry on BFing. If in public I just put the drops in her mouth midway through the feed and that also seems to work. You will prob see results within a day if it works.

I also wonder about soy?? It's in everything! My DS had silent reflux and symptoms which sound a bit similar to yours. I cut out cows' milk, but noticed that this somehow made the reflux a lot WORSE!! After doing a bit of pondering, I realised that I had replaced all the dairy stuff with soy, which he was also intolerant to (possibly even more so). After cutting both dairy and soy completely for a few days, I noticed a huge improvement. Could be worth a try - but you have to check and double check labels. It's in bread, crisps, meat, biscuits, everything!