Talk to me about reflux in babies - baby in hospital

[MaverickSnoopy]

I gave birth 4 days ago. Since then I have had gastroenteritis and I think I might have the onset of an infection. I haven't slept in about 30 hours. I'm feeling very frazzled and emotional.

Newborn DD has just been admitted
to hospital with a whole raft of things, one of which is dehydration. They're giving her formula as she's lost 15% of her birthweight in 4 days (despite me feeding very regularly on demand and expressing when she seemed not to be getting what she needed).

I've noticed that she's very very windy. Vastly so. Takes about 20 minutes to wind and I have to fart her too (who knew that was a thing). Even then I can hear constant gurgling in her tummy. She's been fussing at the breast and pulling off and screaming (this could be because she has thrush). Have tried infacol which makes the wind easier to come up but that's it. She has just had 30ml formula and after the first 10ml she vomited some up and loads came out her nose too. She is also making a lot of gagging noises after eating. We got the wind up and she's lying in bed making these sort of gurgling/gasping noises. Almost sounds like she can't breathe. She's also just done 2 green poos. Last poo was early hours of this morning and was yellow.

Does this sound like reflux? Seeing doctors in the morning and want to discuss with them. Scared to fall asleep in case she chokes!

I have a cmpa baby now 13 months old. If you want to keep breastfeeding, you could start cutting out the most obvious dairy right away, then work on getting the more hidden stuff clear once you're better and out of hospital. It's also advisable to cut all soy (so no soy alternatives to dairy), and in our case egg was also problematic though the symptoms mostly cleared just with dairy and egg exclusion.

I'm glad your little one is getting better already, that sounds like a very severe reaction and it must have been pretty scary.

When I was going through it, although it was a pain to modify my diet so much, I was glad it was something fairly straightforward to manage (though the symptoms are serious, it's something that's straightforward to resolve iyswim).

*dairy and soy exclusion

Poor you OP you've not had the easiest of starts have you.

If you want to continue to bf in some capacity ask to speak to the infant feeding coordinator, or alternatively LLL Oxford have a massive team of volunteers who's are all amazing. They can help you make a plan going forwards. Unfortunately Dr's don't tend to have much bf specific training unless they take a special interest so don't always give advice that will help bf keep going if that's what you want.

Fingers crossed you and baby are on the mend and home soon

Apologies for the delay in updating. DD has been discharged and we're home! It's been a bit manic settling back in hence the delay.

She's doing much better and has now finished her course of antibiotics and has regained a lot of her birthweight. The midwives have been visiting quite a bit too and coming back tomorrow, hopefully to discharge us.

The doctor has given us a repeat prescription for aptimil pepti 1 and the plan is to give that for a month and then to slowly reintroduce normal formula to see whether it is cmpa. This is apparently the procedure in our area. In the meantime I'm expressing 10 - 12 times in 24 hours to protect my supply. It's not a great supply but it's something and better than nothing. If in 4 weeks when we've tried the formula, there is still a reaction then they'll refer us to a specialist.

I am still poorly (can't remember whether I said up thread that I've had a postnatal infection too and saw the dr yesterday and now I've got a water infection, amongst other things) and so waiting until the weekend to cut dairy out of my diet, when hopefully my next lot of antibiotics will have kicked in and I'll be feeling better. I just can't manage to think about it all now, but thankfully DH deals with cmpa at work and so can help me figure it out.

Tongue tie referral has been made and GP said to call in a couple of weeks for an update. If it's taking a while then we'll pay privately.

Thank you all for your support - you have been a wealth of knowledge at a time that was really difficult.