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Infant feeding

Get advice and support with infant feeding from other users here.

Please advise me on feeding a sicky baby

4 replies

isshoes · 21/06/2018 19:27

Due to a rough start, my 10 week old DS and I never managed to establish breastfeeding, so he is now mainly formula fed, with a bottle of expressed milk a day. He happily drinks from the bottle and is on Aptamil.

However, the child is sick all the live long day. He’s sick when he’s just fed, he’s sick when it’s been a couple of hours since he fed. He throws up almost pure milk, curdled milk, and sometimes a mixture of mainly saliva (or stomach acid?) with small bits of curdled milk. Sometimes it doesn’t bother him, sometimes it seems to make him happy, like he feels instantly better, and sometimes he cries and looks in pain - though most of those times he seems to be able to swallow it back down if we give him a dummy. Sometimes it comes out of his nose, which he finds upsetting (as do I, the poor little thing Sad)

He is gaining weight ok - he’s only on the 9th centile but that’s where he’s been since birth. I’ve spoken to two doctors and the consultant who treated him on the neonatal ward, and no one seems overly bothered, because he’s gaining weight. The consultant said that he could have gaviscon or something but it would likely make him constipated, which he’s prone to anyway, so basically just to leave it.

We try to keep him upright during and after feeds and we’ve elevated the head of his bed. I guess pacing his feed more slowly might help, but I can’t do it - he cries as soon as the bottle is taken away for a break (we put a dummy in but that only fools him for about 0.6 seconds). He’s a real guzzler.

Is there anything else I can do, or do I just need to accept that until he grows out of it, my baby (and I, and many of the soft furnishings in my house) will need changing every hour of every day, and that our signature scent will be the smell of partly digested, regurgitated formula milk?

OP posts:
isshoes · 21/06/2018 19:30

Forgot to say, we did try the Cow and Gate anti-reflux formula, but it made him really constipated...

OP posts:
pleasehey · 21/06/2018 19:41

You have 100% described our baby. He never stopped being sick until he started eating solids (sorry!) but what you mentioned about pacing feeds, we found that he always needed to use the teat down from the recommended age range - if that makes sense - so for example he needed to use a newborn teat way past the newborn stage to stop him guzzling. Feeding him was a v lengthy process for that reason and because we took extra time winding him, despite the screams that went with it. Also, he had gaviscon from 6 weeks and while it did help him settle better he still spewed loads. And had extreme constipation. I hope it gets better for you soon!

Luluringo · 26/06/2018 19:37

I'm currently in a similar situation to yourself. It is so stressful. My DD is only 4 weeks old and is starting to loose weight. I've struggled with breastfeeding due to a traumatic birth and a slow start. Because of this I was advised to top up my feeds with formula. That's all very well but my DD can't keep down the formula and brings up most feeds. She also twists and whines when taking her bottles. After one particularly bad episode, we decided to ditch the bottle and EBF , I thought I'd cracked it until she got weighed and I realised otherwise. My supply is too low and I can only express 40ml max in total. So we're back to the bottle and back to the sickness. It's definitely reflux and like you, I've tried the anti reflux formula with the result of dreadful constipation. What helped with that though was feeding her 1 oz of cooled boiled water once a day. We've been offered gaviscon but i hear the constipation is still a problem. We now have accepted that we have a baby who will be sick, not every time, but most. We just have to feed her little and often, keep her propped up during and after feeds and elevate her cot at an angle so that she is not lying flat. A GP told me that this is all because their little tubes haven't developed properly and with that I'm hoping she'll grow out of it or see some improvements soon. Sorry I can't be of any more help but know that you're not alone.

InNeedOfALieInNow · 26/06/2018 19:45

The general consensus is if the baby is gaining weight ok that it’s a laundry issue and it will go with time.
Gaviscon should help with sickness but as mentioned comes with side effects so you may choose not to use it unless weight gain becomes an issue. If he’s otherwise settled then perhaps try the tips above and wait it out. If he were puking a lot of his feeds he wouldn’t be gaining weight. It does look like a lot when they’re sick but I think if you chucked a whole feed on the floor you’d see the difference in the volume. As mentioned by a pp it’s an immature stomach valve that’s the problem, so the stomach doesn’t close and the milk will come back up. Keep him as upright as possible and don’t jiggle him around!

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