Infant Gaviscon experiences/how to use?

[Thompsc]

Hi all. My baby has silent reflux which im not even convinced bothers her THAT much but she does seem to struggle with sleeping as she will cough/gag/choke when laid down sometimes. She’s been on carobel but honestly im fed up with trying to get the consistency right. Sometimes it’s right at the beginning of a feed but too thick by the end, or it’s not thickened enough so she coughs and chokes and it’s giving me huge anxiety about feeding her now as she’s on dr browns level 3 teats.

im thinking about trying the infant Gaviscon we were prescribed, she has loose stools anyway so I’m not TOO concerned about the constipation and I was thinking about starting with just two doses a day, (2x sachets morning bottle 2 sachets evening bottle).

I tried giving her it previously but it just kept getting stuck in the teat! It was driving me crazy. The milk didn’t look thicker like with the carobel it was more like the granules didn’t disolve properly. We use a perfect prep machine, does anybody know a solution to this?

also, any general success stories with Gaviscon would be great. Full doses/half doses welcome haha

Honestly we took DS off it after 5 days. The constipation was absolutely awful. A full day of screaming and passing rock hard stools. I really wouldn't recommend! Didn't seem to work for him anyway.

That was 3 sachets a day

Oh really @showmethegin sorry to hear that :( did you find an alternative that worked? To be honest I’m thinking about just taking her off it all together because I can’t work out how much it bothers her? Sometimes she’ll spit up clear fluid but she doesn’t cry. The worst she’s been is when the carobel hadn’t thickened enough so she drank lots quickly and I could hear it coming back up and she was crying, but as I say that’s because she’s on a fast flow and the milk hasn’t thickened! X

Sorry for late response! We gave up to be honest. He had been on infacol so I took him off that too, sort of back to basics! We have a health visitor appointment next week for a weigh in; if he isn't losing weight I don't think we will treat the vomiting anymore. It doesn't seem to bother him and he is a bouncing healthy happy baby.

If they are concerned about weight loss then I would be tempted to try omeprazole which I have read can be very effective but without the nasty side effects.

My baby (now 7 months) was on gaviscon every day in every bottle for the first four months of his life. Horrible.
First, it won’t look like it’s thickened in the bottle as it works slightly different to carobel. It mixes with the stomach acid and then thickens to form a “layer” to help keep milk down so it does the thickening bit after being drank. We also use a perfect prep and it won’t be causing any issues with helping it dissolve, it’s just annoyingly tricky to get fully mixed in.
side point with the carobel if you’re not already, it mixes in better when the milk is warm so once the final cold water has been added mix the bottle of milk first before adding carobel and mix again so it’s not initially sitting on the just added cold water.
We found the gaviscon did help a little bit but because of the sodium content you are limited to the amount of sachets you can use a day and we found much in the same way as carobel we were having to do all sorts of calculations (we tried everything from 2/1.5/1/0.5 sachets in a bottle) to get just enough to help but not so much we were exceeding the limit and so it became a bit of a nightmare and ended up not really being able to use enough to help.
Then by 4 months the constipation finally kicked in, in a BIG way and it was awful. We decided in the end the sick was causing him way less discomfort than the constipation and took him off it.
We also did a stint on omeprazole (came with its own set of problems too).
By 5 months he was still quite a sicky baby but didn’t seem bothered so we just left him to it and when we started weaning the reflux pretty much disappeared and even more so when he sat up unaided as his core muscles were strong enough to help his tummy.