Changed formula type but should I change it back?

[SwivelHips]

DS now 12 wks is mixed fed. Since birth he's had trouble with wind pains etc and now has colief mixed in his bottle.

He'd been on SMA comfort for approx 4 wks, not ideal as his poo turned really green and smelled awful, but it was an improvement on the normal formula although he still used to have gripe pains in the early morning and would be in pain. HV said the green poo was fine so not to worry (so I didn't).

Wind forward to Tuesday, I'm in Boots, and it looked like the SMA comfort had been rebranded. In my infinite wisdom I picked up Aptimel comfort (because I use the Aptimel cartons in emergencies) his poo immediately went back to yellow/brown although it was runny. GP advised to stay on aptimel as the yellow/brown poo is an improvment and he'll settle down.

That evening he was crying with pain, really unsettled, he also cried when I offered breast. Last night same again, we dropped a feed in the end because he wouldn't stop crying and he feel asleep with exhaustion. Had FF at 11pm last night (no problem) then BF at 4 (no problem) BF at 6am, then started crying again at 8 with the wind pain.

Should we revert back to SMA comfort and the green poo or keep going with the Aptimel comfort? Or should we try a different one? I was in tears last night listening to him crying, he's normal such a happy little thing I dont know what to do for the best.

I would go back to the one you were using tbh, if the poo wasn't bothering him then I'd stuck to it.

Just as an aside, did your HV recommend colief in the comfort milk?? My HV warned me not to use both, either use the colief or the comfort milk and not both otherwise they get too much of the prebiotic in it and it upsets their tummy.

I just used comfort milk and dentinox, maybe this explains the nappies?

Blimey no she's never mentioned that...gp did say we could try and reduce it now which we had started. Crikey hope I've not made him worse....

I put DD on the comfort milk at 6 weeks and changed her back at 10 weeks so she wasn't on it for that long.

I would maybe see what he's like without the colief, you might find that it will ease the problem, I remember as clear as day my HV saying not to use both, same as gaviscon, the only thing you should use with comfort milk is dentinox or infacol.

It's horrible isn't it? I mix fed for about a week and found that my breast milk made DD the worst, that was the hardest part for me :(

My dd2 was fussy and got terrible stomach pains and blOating and her nappies were freeb and snarky horrendous almost acidic. Her bum was red raw. This was even on comfort formula. What stopped all of it instantly was a pepti milk prescribed from
Gp. Colic is always their go to thing but colic is often an undisguised dairy allergy.

Green and stinky ( damn auto correct)

So bloody difficult, doesn't help that my head is mush when I'm trying to relay the symptoms to gp.
I've often wondered about the dairy thing, when he was ebf he still had the pains.
Tango what problems did you have when you mix fed?

DD was so colicy, for the first 6 weeks I EBF and she was miserable, always full of wind but could never get it out, pulling legs up, squealing from 6pm-3am everyday, it was awful, I took her to my GP and he told me she had silent reflux aswell so to try gaviscon but it didn't work and made her unbelievably constipated.

As the end of my tether I bought the comfort milk and started using it an she started to settle, but I still BF her during the day and used the milk at night. After a bf she was obviously in agony, you could actually smell the acid coming up the back of her mouth so I stopped bfing, put her in comfort milk in Dr Browns bottles and within days she was a different baby, no more pulling up her legs, struggling with wind or acidy burps.

I blamed myself thinking it was something I was eating but looking back she just had very bad reflux and because BM is so thin it came back up a lot more easily thus causing her distress.

It must've been difficult for you, but thankfully its all came good for your DD. I'd thought if I get to 3 months then I can stop bf, but now we're here its all quite easy and no wish to stop, well easy apart from the supply I now have. He does bring back the breast milk though but I'm hoping he grows out of it. I did mention silent reflux at gp visit last month

The HV advice about not adding colief to comfort milk 'because he will get a double dose of prebiotics' is bonkers. Colief is lactase enzyme, it breaks down lactose in both breast milk and formula. Prebiotics are a completely different thing - they are basically 'good' bacteria.

Dairy intolerance sounds v likely to me. One way forward would be to cut dairy out of your diet entirely (also soy) for a short period and see how you go. For supplements you would have to use a hydrolysed formula like Aptamil Pepti. YOu can buy it OTC but it is megabucks. You might think it's worth it tho, to try and establish if it's the milk protein that's causing the problem. It's not uncommon.

narmada I probably have the exact science wrong, my HV told me all this when I was in the throes of depression so I can't remember the exact reason why they don't recommend both but all I know is they don't recommend both :o