Urgent advice needed: Paediatrician has suggested something and I am so NOT SURE?

[dejags]

DD has recently been very very ill.

As a result the little mite hasnt gained weight very well and is still quite tiny.

She is just under 8lbs at 7.5 weeks. Since bringing her home from the hospital, we have been having a nightmare with feeding.

It goes like this:

DD is hungry - screams for a bottle. I feed her.

One hour later she is screaming for another feed (or at least that's what I think she is screaming for) but I can't see how she can be hungry as I have already given her a huge bottle.

So I give in and feed her again, she falls asleep but she ends up constipated and on laxatives.

If I don't feed her she screams for an hour or so, finally drifts off into an exhausted sleep, then wakes up. The cycle starts again.

In desparation, I called the paediatrician this morning - he suggested putting baby rice into her bottles to thicken it (he assures me that this will not aggravate the constipation and may satisfy her apparent hunger). I was totally shocked, can this advice be right?

Can anybody give me a professional view?

dejags - dd had a thickener for her milk to help it stay down. In the UK you can now get 'stay down' formula I think, which didn't exist then.

Bearing in mind Carys's last few weeks I understand you not wanting to give meds - but balance that with the knowledge that refluxing babies often have more chest infections. If they aspirate a bit of milk it can set up an infection.

Have you got the head of her cot propped up?

Hello Saggar, how are you?

Yes she is sleeping on a inclined bed.

We are starting with the baby gaviscon today - as a test (rather than the baby rice). If the symptoms improve vastly and she does have reflux, I'll go with what the paed suggests - which is likely a long term course of Losec or similar.

She was on Losec and Anti-reflux milk when she was very poorly to manage the risk of aspiration.

Poor little love. She really is having a run of things

Oh and the AR (anti-reflux) milk caused hideous constipation. I feel like I am on a merry-go-round of symptoms.

Oh, one last thing

DD has gained 25g's a day since she was sick. She was weighed the day before she was admitted and has subsequently maintained her curve and has today broken the 4kg barrier.

At least something is going right.

Fine here thanks

Dd had reflux meds for quite a while - having the ng tube long term made it worse I think. Hope Carys improves on the Gaviscon and she can put on some weight. She must be using up all her calories getting well.

Oh yes - constipation [eek]!

I can hear distant far away rumbling coming closer and closer and suddenly hunkermunker will rise like a phoenix and say 'Nooooo!'

Can't imagine how this can be a good idea - he's recommending it for hunger, not for any other medical issue. And she's teeny - it's not as if there isn't lots of evidence that early weaning causes problems, expecially this early. You're not taking advice of strangers, you're questioning your own very good instincts.

I have to say that ds had severe reflux and gaviscon didn't help him at all (and seemed to constipate him) but baby rice really did help a lot. It was definitely reflux (he had a ph probe), I think gaviscon just doesn't work for everyone. He was bf, don't know if that makes a difference.

We also found that when we gave him the baby rice he ate much better off the breast and gained much faster. Didn't seem to constipate him too much, although my pediatric ge did say that could be a problem.

btw, ds has now been on reflux meds for 2 months and he still advises baby rice with every feed, and ds is noticeably worse if we miss one.

My little boy took combination of gaviscon, ranitidine and domperidone and it worked well (domperidone moves milk/food out of the stomach quicker). If you have a serious case of refulx I don't think gaviscon alone is much use. I had to fight to get the other medicines but they made an enormous difference - his face actually changed. I look at photos of him before the medication and he has a constant frown on his face. Once the pain went his whole face lifted. In fact I find it diffiuclt to look at those early photos because I know how ill he was and I had no idea.