Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Infant feeding

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

Reflux - is there anything else we can try?

6 replies

bellsshells · 01/01/2021 05:27

Hello

Our son is 6 weeks old abs breastfed (mixture of on the breast and 1-2 expressed feeds a day). He has reflux - though it’s less sickness (though he does have the occasional sick, abs actually increasingly so) but simply we cannot lay him on his back as he gets acid reflux and starts grunting/gagging/choking/coughing after a few mins. And I cannot bear to see him in pain, so we pick him up.

Currently we are having to hold him upright all night and he sleeps on us - my partner and I are sleeping in shifts. We’re exhausted. And I’m upset to see my son struggling so much

He’s also now starting to get more fussy when he is feeding, and so feeding less.

These are the things we have tried so far - I’m posting here to see if there is anything else anyone can recommend, we’ll try anything

Gaviscon from the doctor, this gave him horrendous constipation (screaming in pain) so we have lactulose too now which seems to have cleared the constipation. In my opinion though, the gaviscon just doesn’t work. We’ve been taking for about 10 days and still cannot lay him down to sleep
We’re giving c4 doses of gaviscon a day, mainly afternoon and night (the focus on getting him settled and pain free to be able to sleep at night)
Tilting his bed (we have a next to me)
Feeding upright
Letting my let down in to a cloth
Holding upright for 1 hour after feeding

Burping and more burping, and then some more burping
Smaller feeds

We have asked doctor about omeprazole, who doesn’t want to prescribe it yet. So we’re pretty desperate to hear and try anything else that might work.

Thank you in advance

OP posts:
ScrumptiousBears · 01/01/2021 05:47

Are you sure that's all it is? My nephew had similar and was diagnosed with CMPA. Took a while though

Cherryup · 01/01/2021 05:55

Oh you poor things, it's such a hard time. My DS had silent reflux.

Make another appointment with your gp, I had to beg for help in the end but I got it and got a referral to paediatrics. He ended up being put on various different meds but they did really help.

Have a look at this website, it's Australian but I found it more informative than the UK equivalent reflux

He will grow out of it and things will improve until he does Thanks

norbert23 · 01/01/2021 05:58

Same here and it was all sorted as soon as I cut out all dairy while I bf and she was diagnosed with CMPA. Silent reflux is awful, I hope you find something that works for you, we also tried gaviscon but it was such a faff, luckily as soon as we went dairy free it stopped within days xx

teezletangler · 01/01/2021 06:01

Gaviscon is overprescribed and worse than useless.

I'd always consider an underlying CMPA in babies with severe reflux. You should try a very strict dairy and soya free diet for 1-2 weeks and see is that improves things; if there's no significant difference within 2 weeks it's not dairy. (They used to say you needed to eliminate dairy and soya for 6 weeks but newer research shows it doesn't take that long to be gone from your system).

Omeprazole is the next step if that doesn't work. It's much more effective than gaviscon.

teezletangler · 01/01/2021 06:04

In the meantime, have you tried bedsharing? If he will settle beside you, it is much safer than risking falling asleep with him on you.

bellsshells · 02/01/2021 16:05

Wow this is all so helpful. Thank you so much. We're back at the doctors on Monday I've started cutting out dairy. Thanks again!

OP posts:
New posts on this thread. Refresh page
Please create an account

To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.

This thread is closed and is no longer accepting replies. Click here to start a new thread.