Infant Gaviscon for Reflux - What do I need to know?

[IAmABam]

My 15 wk old got Infant Gaviscon from the GP today, told to give one sachet in her formula 4 times per day, increasing to 5 times if she doesn't improve. For those of you who have used it before can you tell me if it worked? Were there any side effects? Anything else i should know? Any information would be very gratefully received

I was given infant gaviscon for Ds when he was five weeks. I started him on 3 sachets a day even tho the dr said before every feed. Ds is bf on demand and I genuinely didn't want to give him gaviscon up to ( what was then ) 14 times a day.
Turns out I was glad I didn't, the constipation seemed to bother him so much more than the reflux. I stopped giving him gaviscon after two days.
I just wonder if his digestive system wasn't mature enough for gaviscon. I hope your dc doesn't have the same issue.

It gave my DS constipation which was worse than the reflux. We stopped it and had rantidine which takes time to work, but was great in the end. It was so bad I have never used it again, so just keep an eye on bowel movements. Hope the reflux gets sorted soon!

It worked for mine! He was breastfed though, not formula, so maybe that's why he didn't get constipated.

Interestingly, we were told similar things about dosage but a specialist at a breastfeeding clinic we went to said that because of the way Gaviscon works you need to give the full amount of doses, which I think is six a day, in order for it to work at all.

Gaviscon was the wonder drug for us. DD was struggling to put on weight and we were all concerned. She droppes from the 75th to the 9th percentile due to the amount of puking she was doing. After just a couple of weeks we saw a significant difference in her weight gain.

I was still bf'ing so mixing up the gaviscon was a bit of a pain. However you soon get used to it. Good luck!

It didn't work for DD. Just made her constipated. We found Ranitidine far more effective.

I've been using gaviscon with every feed for about a week now DS is 8wk old. Had awful sickeness but was told as he was putting on weight it wasn't an issue. Started with squirming while feeding to full on crying and refusing his feeds so the gaviscon was provided.

Can't say it's helped wth the colic pain at all but the sickness slowed down instantly and has almost stopped now to a mild spit up. His poo is certainly harder now.. Not a cow pat as previous. But he's going a little bit most days where as before (previously taking comfort formula) was every 3 days or so.

I gather constipation is more hard pellets is this right ??

For my little one it just solidified things - they were more like grown up poos. Didn't seem to cause her a great deal of difficulty though.

She's 9 months now and still using Gaviscon. We find that we still have bouts of puking if we stop using it.

We were told to try it once a day as that's the only bottle dd had. Unsurprisingly it didn't work. This was from the dr who told us that reflux upset the parents more than the baby and that crying was good for her...

Went to another dr the next week who gave ranitadine, worked so much better. Still on it now at 13wks

Friend whose ds is on gaviscon has real problems with him having constipation.

It worked for us, but LO's poos went from runny to toothpastey in consistency.

My only advice would be to check your teat size...you may need a bigger teat as it thickens the formula.

We used it from birth to 5 months and it was a life saver. DD didn't react well to it initially and I stopped it after a couple of goes as it seemed to make her scream in pain. However, after several days of losing entire feeds I tried it again and she responded well. There was the issue with constipation but I used the sugar water trick and that produced a poo every few days so wasn't overly worried and DD seemed fine with that too. She is 7 months now and eating solids and still breastfeeding and the reflux is well and truly gone. If it helps to know I used a Calpol syringe to feed the liquid to her using 1 packet, 3 times a day.