Infant gaviscon and breast feeding help!!

[kittencuddles]

My Dd has been prescribed infant gaviscon for I lent reflux. I have always BF so have no idea about sterilising etc.

The gaviscon should be mixed with cooled boiled water, do I have to boil and cool water every time?

I have sterilised some bottles and put cooled, boiled water in them to use. How long can I keep this water for? How long do bottles stay sterile for?

Please help, I literally have no idea!

I had this problem with DS1. I asked a GP mate of mine and she said the following would be ok, so this is what I did:

Sterilise lots of small bottles
Mix up the powdered Gav with boiled water straight from the kettle (ie hot!), a dose in each bottle.
Keep bottles in fridge till needed.
Give dose to baby before a breastfeed. Try to make sure it's before a full feed, otherwise it'll be too much Gav for the amount of milk iykwim.

You can tweak the amount of water you use to make up the dose. You can mix the powder with breastmilk if you like but I found it hard to stop it going lumpy. If your baby doesn't like bottles then maybe try syringing it in?

The packet tells you not to make the doses in advance, to give it after a feed, etc etc. I figure it's pretty inert stuff. As long as you're not storing made-up doses for days on end, I reckon it's fine But this worked well for us. I used to take a couple of bottles of Gav up to bed with me so I didn't have to fiddle around at nightfeeds.

Hope she's ok with it. Look out for constipation, and good luck

We would mix the powder with (I think) about 30ml of expressed breast milk and gave it on a spoon after most feeds. We moved onto mixing it with water, and being a bit relaxed about the amount of water.

I think there's instructions for this on the packet.

I worked a treat for us, and meant we could vary the dose as he needed it. He seemed to really enjoy it in the end (weird boy), and as he became more mobile would happily stop doing whatever he was up to to slurp some gaviscon (now I think about it, it might have been one of his first words!).

We started him on it at 4 months, till sometime after he was one. Bought nice soft weaning spoons to administer.

Good luck!

Oh, he didn't seem to mind it going a bit lumpy and it seemed to work just fine.

Oh, and out and about we'd take some cooled boil water in a bm storage bag, and one of those teeny expressing pots (that had been sterilised) and a spoon to make it up on the go. I think we always gave it after a feed. He would have been a screeching nightmare before hand and not cooperated.

Thanks for all the advice. If I sterilise bottles etc how long do they stay sterile for?

If you immediately close them they'll be fine for a day.

How old is your DC? We're they premature or are they immunocompromised? If there's no special circumstances you don't need to worry so much. If you've got a hygiene setting on your dishwasher they come out of there sterile too!

Sterilise your bottles and add some boiled water to them then seal them - they will be fine and dandy for 24 hours sor you to add gaviscn to as and when needed.

Just as an aside - many a baby are fine on infant Gaviscon but it can cause constipation. I didn't think our life could get much worse when DS had reflux - until a week of constipation added to our reflux woes. Oh the memories