3 week old with severe reflux, vomits after every feed even from his nose, even after 1-2 hours when laid down despite being held up for 30mins after feeding

[BoyMumToBe34]

He also occasionally chokes and is unable to breath and it’s terrifying to wait until he finally can catch his breath and goes limp and sleeps. Anyone else experience this? Any advice? Some doctors say raise the cot, others said it’s risky. I’m struggling. He’s on Aptimal Pepti Junior due to this and omeraprazole once a day. Any advice please…. Is the choking normal symptom?

Is the vomiting projectile? Pyloric stenosis needs ruling out if the vomiting is severe. See your GP.

No it's not. Pls seek medical advice.

Definitely get medical advice. Who said it is reflux?

How many specialists have you seen?
You need to take him back, demand answers

One they scanned for pyloric and said not. Diagnosed with reflux…

I had this with my daughter (born at 24 weeks). Like you we'd keep her upright and 45 mins to an hour later she would vomit incl from nose. The worst thing was watching her writhe around and squeal in pain.

Consultants initially prescribed baby Gaviscon (did nothing other than worsen constipation) and then Omeprazole. To be honest it helped a bit in terms of the pain, but the reflux pretty much continued.

Once discharged (at 4 months) hospital asked GP to continue prescribing going forward which ended up a bit of a battle as the medication "is expensive". I also found the GP tended to minimise reflux "oh ALL babies have it she'll grow out of it." which wasn't remotely helpful.

I've added the detail as you may need to be quite pushy.

No, the choking doesn't sound normal, even for a baby with severe reflux. It sounds horrible, but can you get a video of it, and also keep notes on how often it happens, then show them to the GP?

On the reflux side of it, have they tried thickening his formula (using with carobel)? I would want to discuss with the GP/infant feeding specialist, though, given the choking. Does he seem in pain in general or after feeds? The omeprazole aims to control the pain more than the sickness. They tend to start babies at 1 mg/kg, but some babies need a higher dose, so that might need to be discussed if he's still in pain.

How are the baby’s poos? My LO was similar and has CMPA - vomiting and lots of spit up and diarrhoea after almost every feed. His poos were slimey / mucous. Worth looking up to see if any of the symptoms match.

i was EBF and removed all dairy and soya and even that didn’t help much. So we moved on to special formula now (alfamino hypoallergenic).

Sorry meant to add our daughter also appeared to choke. Her blood oxygen would drastically fall. Raising cot to an incline didn't really help.

The only way we were able to "manage" the situation was to hold her upright so head on out shoulder for at least an hour and then watch her like a hawk until the next feed. It was exhausting.

She did eventually grow out of it but it used to irritate me so much when people gave that advice as though it was helpful!

Have you investigated CMPA?

Agree that videoing it can help to get the doctors to take it seriously. Or having your baby projectile vomit and hit the wall of the GP’s office six feet away works (guess how I know that one). Full elimination of cows milk (we had to use a second level prescription formula) and then later a high dose of omeprazole made it manageable for us.

Are you getting baby weighed regularly? My experience was that mine had awful reflux but because his weight was still increasing the doctors just didn’t care. But if there is any impact on growth you should get more engagement.