Reflux

[Kijtaylor19]

Hi,
My son is 4 months old now and has been a sicky baby since the day he was born. He has always been bottle fed (started on cow and gate) which I changed after 2 months to see if it the milk was the problem. Now on SMA and still the same, doctors prescribed gaviscon - sachet and omeprazole 5mg which also hasn’t worked. He is drinking 6oz every 4hrs 5 bottles a day.

The health visitor advised me to stop the medication and change to the SMA reflux milk, this has actually made him worse! More sick than ever, which comes mid bottle, after a bottle and hours after. Some spit up and some projective vomit. He can seem very distressed bringing his legs up and crying whilst feeding. He was opening his Bowles every day/ every other (currently slightly constipated ? New milk)

Please any advice on what else I can do? I feel like my doctors aren’t bothered because he’s gaining weight (16lbs 8oz) there’s got to be something else?☹️

I have had similar issues with reflux not taken seriously due to her gaining weight.

We are on omperazole and gaviscon too. With the omperazole we have had to be keen about getting the dose both corrected for weight gain and increased in total dose. We saw a paediatrician through a & e and were told that our gp should have increased the dose and not just adjusted by weight. The starting dose is 0.7mg/kg and it can go up to 3mg/kg upto a maximum of 20mg, e.g for a 5kg baby the starting dose would be 3.5mg and the maximum dose is 15mg.
We have had a love hate relationship with gaviscon it helps with her reflux a lot but it causes constipation, it's also a faff to give to a bf baby. We have accepted it is needed but have to give lactulose alongside it for constipation.
Some of the comfort and reflux milks have the same effect, they both work on the same principle thicker milk is harder to throw up but it is also thicker at the other end!

We are 2 years into this scenario.
Our paediatrician went mad about the HV saying to stop the meds and use reflux milk; as all that would do is stop some of the sick but not enough to stop the pain of the reflux.

We weighed out the gaviscon precisely to the oz of the bottle; so 4oz would be a full 0’62g sachet, 6oz is 0.91g etc. Buy some
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We also kept DD upright for a minimum of 45 mins after feeding. Check your weight to omeprazole dosing, it needs altering often; we also split the dose so she had it twice a day and finally, we weaned early at 5 months.

My daughter had reflux and we really struggled to find something that would work for her. We tried Gaviscon, but found it didn't really help. We changed to Carobel which worked better for us.

We didn't try using reflux milk but the health visitor did suggest we try comfort milk. This made her a lot worse and we found out she had a milk allergy.