SMA stay down or aptimal comfort?

[Nicr1]

Hi, my LO is being bottle feed due to his birth weight being 11lbs 3oz! He had bad reflux and the HO told me to try SMA stay down as he's on gaviscon. Has anyone used aptimal comfort? I am currently using Aptimal.

How old is your baby? Are you feeling okay about bottlefeeding? Are you happy with the decision or was it advised by a HP?

There are lots of good tips about coping with relux on here.

I would not reccomend SMA as it made my dd sick quite badly. I used cow and gate and she took straight to it hope this helps x

It is obviously your own choice to bottle feed but there is no reason why he can't breastfeed due to being a high birth weight.

If he is being very sick, and the gaviscon + comfort milks don't make any difference, you might want to consider whether he has a milk allergy. It causes vomiting. Often it also causes eczema but not always. There are specialist formulas available, or you could go back to/ have another crack at breastfeeding.

My DS had the stay down milk. It completely transformed him - not so sicky, slept better, less crying and generally happier baby. You'll get differing opinions but try whichever is best for your baby and you. And agree about keeping an eye out for milk intolerances :-)

From what I understand, there is hardly any difference between these two milks.

It may be worth looking at how he is being fed, not just what you are feeding him? Reflux symptoms are very often caused by too much formula too quickly, so it might help a lot to offer more frequent but smaller feeds?

My LO is 6 weeks old. I wanted to breastfeed but he was born thru Caesarian and had a low blood sugar level because of his size so the hospital bottle feed him as my milk had not come thru and he needed milk. I tried to introduce him to the breast but he wouldn't take and got distressed as with the bottle the milk flowed quicker.

I was in Boots yesterday and C&G and Aptamil have both brought out new anti-reflux milks. These are different from the comfort milks. Might be worth having a look at them

We found Enfamil AR very helpful with reflux. But if you use a staydown milk you shouldn't use gaviscon as well.

nicr1 - I'm not judging you; I just wondered how you were feeling about it as sometimes, due to HPs guidance, mums often feel as the decision wasn't their own and get down about it.

If you did want to start bf again, a good breast feeding supporter could help you get him back to the breast, even though he's been bottle fed for 6 weeks.

Oh no not at all. I did want to breastfeed but as you said it was taken away from me and I thought 6 weeks is to late introduced him to the breast and my milk supply would be gone?

It will be slightly harder to re-lactate but very do-able usually. You could speak to a breastfeeding supporter, such as the BfN helpline or pop to your local breastfeeding group at a children's centre, if they have one.

tiktok would probably be the best person to ask but you can take prescribed medication to help you produce more milk if your GP will prescribe it.

Even women who have never had children can in theory lactate and certainly many mums do relactate with success weeks after birth can do so fairly well. You just to get your supply up and running . Lots of skin to skin and expressing every 3 hrs to begin with if you can to stimulate supply.

You could try hand pumping to begin with to stimulate - cup your thumb and forefinger into a c-shape about 1 inch out from the nipple. Then rhythmically squeeze your digits towards each other, rather than moving them towards the nipple - as if you're squeezing through the breast tissue. Keep the rhythm going until you get milk. Once you see the milk and know it's there, I think you'll feel really positive. Try to get your baby to suckle whenever you can and if he gets stressed, give him a little expressed from a cup, rather than a bottle if you can. I'm a breastfeeding peer helper but don't have much experience with relactation - only helped one mother but that was only after 4 weeks of stopping. She relactated successfully though and she had a very big baby.

If you do decide to, good luck. If not, then I'm sure your son will soon be on his way to reflux recovery with whatever formula you choose.

I relactated with dd . that was at nine weeks and she had had only formula since day 3 of her life. it was hard world but so worth it. by 15 weeks she was on bm only and was absolutely huge. I ended up producing gallons. or so it seemed
.....

I've used my electric pumped and it looks like my milk is still there.
However it was minuscule!! Do you know if the medula shields are good as my LO will now be used to the teat and that was the problem in the first place he couldn't latch on!

Hi that is great re milk. I only had drops at the start too. i think it would be preferable not to use shields in the long run as your nipples will benefit more from direct stimulation.but in the short term...weeel, i would think it's a good thing if he spends time hanging out at breast in any which way he can!

if he can't latch i would say try and see a qualified location consultant . they can help with this. can your baby extend tongue right clear of his lower lip?has he been checked for a tongue tie?

Whatever you decide you will find lots of help here.

No he hasn't been checked for tongue tie but I don't think he has it. I asked the midwife twice to help me to get him to latch on but she wasn't that interested and I think I didn't have the confidence plus he got really distressed as he was given a bottle straight away after birth and I had a Caesarian so I was very sore so trying to hold a 11lb baby screaming was difficult!

Wow OP it sounds like they weren't very helpful in hospital

I would second the advice to get some good, qualified help with latching. The best place to start is to call one of the national breastfeeding helplines - they are free and staffed by BF counsellors who are all really approachable and have loads of experience and knowledge. They can give you details of your nearest BF counsellor who might even be able to come out and see you:

NCT - 0300 33 00 771
National breastfeeding helpline - 0300 100 0210
La Leche League - 0845 120 2918

The best thing is to try offering the breast when he's not that hungry, so he doesn't get too frustrated. At 6 weeks he will still have all his natural BF instincts - you can encourage these by lying back in a comfy position and having him lie on your chest - video here. Given time and lots of patience, he will root around and may be able to latch himself on!

Good luck!!

To answer your original question, we used comfort and I think it made some improvement but the biggest change was when we moved to lactose free prescription milk.

I questioned whether we should use SMA and was told by our paed unit that the cow and gate is altered to make it easier to digest, whilst the SMA has a thickener in it to keep it in the stomach, hence it's made with cold water. At one stage we were adding thickener to the comfort as well to try abs keep it down, along with domperidone and ranitidine. Hellish!

Nic, it's totally possible to relactate....you need support, encouragement and A Plan. You need to work out a strategy and stick to it, and it is hard work and time consuming at first, but it can be done!

You can call any of the bf helplines and get some ideas.

You could even start a thread on here and ask for the experiences of women who have done it.

If you do need formula you can get Enfamil AR on prescription from the doctors, but you have to fight for it. I went down this route as gaviscon has (or did have 5yrs ago) sodium in it and I wasn't happy with the Hugh dose ds was prescribed, do after some advice on here I pushed for Enfamil and it transformed my ds (although took me until he was 6mo to get it)

Good luck!

I would second the suggestion to get real-life support and a plan. If you need any informal support re. relactation, or reflux if it turns out to be that, let me know by PM - I have travelled both of those paths with my two :)