Reflux Advice

[refluxissues]

Seeking advice for a reflux baby. 9 weeks old, EBF and gaining weight but very refluxy and windy. Sicks up multiple times after each feed, has silent relfux hours after feed and also struggles with trapped wind. Baby is miserable and showing signs of discomfort all day long. Sleeping is also a problem because she wakes up coughing, being sick or screaming with wind and/or silent reflux. GP hasn't helped-gaviscon caused constipation and more wind and. GP unconcerned as baby is gaining weight. I eliminated dairy, spicy food and citrus from my diet. I suspect a fast let down and pump a bit before feeding in a reclined position. Should I stop breastfeeding and try an anti-reflux formula? Or combo feed witn the anti reflux formula? Would appreciate any input from anyone who has done similar or who has another solution

Also forgot to say poop smells like vinegar and is always very liquid. Hard to say if mucus or not. Only reading today that this could indicated Cmpa. No other signs like a rash

Reflux advise. If you are EBF you can try to thicken the milk using carobel. You could speak to your GP about this. I found gripe water helped my girls. Then other obvious advice your probably already doing is to keep upright for 30-60 mins after a feed. Baby massage helped my girls with tummy massages (still need to do this occassionally now and they are 18 months)

I'm not 100% sure but I think the anti reflux formula is a bit of a gimic. In terms of CMPA if you are breast feeding and also eliminating dairy from your diet this shouldn't be an issue. Although evidence is limited on how much if any cows milk is passed from you to baby anyway.

Did you cut out soya too? Half of babies are allergic to both soya and dairy

My daughter has allergies and reflux and beautiful weight gain. She needed high dose omperazole as much gaviscon as I could get in her, lactulose for the constipation and I had to remove a lot of foods from my diet. She now has 20 food allergies but this is not typical! She was 4.5 months before we got on suitable reflux treatment and down the allergy path. She is 3.5 and still on a lot of meds for reflux and it often isn't controlled by meds

Bless you it’s not easy. My LO has multiple allergies so I get how hard it is.

So firstly have you had someone check for a tongue tie? like a lactation specialist. It needs to be that is trained in diagnosing tongue ties. GPs, midwives, HV aren’t trained in it and can often say there isn’t one. Making sure there’s no tongue tie would be my first step as all those symptoms can be caused by tongue tie and you don’t want to go down the road of eliminating things from your diet unnecessarily.

if you’ve already gone down that route then it’s likely food related. I know a lot of people don’t really believe it but food proteins can pass through breastmilk. So it sounds like you’ve cut out quite a bit and done it quickly seeing as baby is 9 weeks. Honestly I’d avoid this so early as you may end up going down a rabbit hole and find yourself eating very little (this happened to me). How long have you been dairy free?

If baby does have CMPA, they don’t have to have every single symptom so the fact there’s no rash doesn’t mean it’s not CMPA.

breastmilk is always going to be better for baby because it naturally heals their gut however if you feel like you want to go to formula that’s also your choice but be warned, it can take quite a while to find the right formula that baby settles on and also the dairy free formulas are very thin and so often cause silent reflux etc from that aspect so you may find that you still have the same battle even on formula xx