Baby off his food

[cbear1989]

Wondered if anyone else had been through something similar with their baby, and had any advice?

Our baby is almost 10 weeks old now, and has been a bit fussy with his food for a while. He's always struggled with his wind, I express so we are combi feeding him alongside formula.

We started with Cow and Gate, weirdly he always drank that really well, in fact he drank more then as opposed to now and never really left any milk or refused it, but we charged him onto kendamil about 3-4:weeks ago as he was getting a lot of trapped wind and only pooing once every 2 days. Kendamil has defo helped improve his wind and he has daily poo sometimes twice, however hes been spitting up and being sick a hell of a lot more.

The main thing worrying us sick is that he just seems to be off his food and has been that way for a few weeks now. He used to down 120ml easily, but most of the time its a struggle to get that down him now. Half of the time he seems to drink about 60ml and then gives up. Once we've stopped him halfway to burp him hes just not interested in the rest . We've tried letting him go longer before burps but sometimes that just means he is sick.

We've been in touch with the doctors as he was on the 98th quartile for his weight and had dropped to the 75th. He'd gone back up to the 91st but now hes back to being fussy and leaving milk again. He had his 8 week jabs yesterday which could of course be a factor but to be honest this is becoming the norm and we are so worried about him, we don't want him to drop weight quartile again and start losing weight.

Docs have discussed gaviscon and omeprazole for possible reflux. Hesitant to try gaviscon as I know it can cause constipation so dont want to resolve one problem to give him another.... and anxious about putting him on omeprazole and him becoming reliant on it so young. Just at our wits end and want to help our baby but so unsure on what is the right thing to do.

Any advice for anyone' who has maybe had something similar? Does this even sound like reflux?

Baby does plenty of wet nappies and generally seems alert and happy. Hes not the best sleeper bless him, but to be fair the inconsistent small feeds can't be helping

Any advice would be appreciated.

If he had a lot of wind you could try adding Dentinox to his bottles and if that doesn’t work try a Comfort Formula.

From the posts on here a lot of babies do struggle with wind on Kendamil.

Also, does he need to drink the full 120 mls? If you’re Combi-feeding he probably won’t need as much milk as a FF baby. If you give one of the BFing Helplines the BFC should be able to help you what kind of quantities of milk he needs in a day

I combination fed my baby, breastfeeding rather than pumping so I never knew how much milk the baby was getting for the majority of feeds. Some days the baby would be going through a growth spurt, cluster feeding like crazy - presumably taking a LOT of breastmilk, relatively speaking - and then things calmed down for a few days-weeks. I wonder if your baby was having a growth spurt and therefore drank more then normal, but is now back to growing at a more normal rate?

Certainly there were days when the baby would drink 100ml of formula and then want a top up which they wouldn't normally need, or I would BF and then the baby would take 50ml more of formula (sometimes 100ml even after a significant BFing session...). It was very variable and I judged that things were ok based on wet and dirty nappies and the baby outgrowing clothes rather than weight.

Thanks @BunnyRuddington, to be fair we've tried gaviscon and gripe water, neither of which agreed with him, we use dentinox as and when he needs it but his wind hasn't so much been the problem more recently, the sickness and loss of appetite is more of a worry. Tricky trying to determine the root cause of it. We did think maybe the Kendamil is a bit rich for him although his last formula made him constipated which is just as difficult.

@OtterMummy2024 I just express tbh, stressed me out not knowing how much milk he'd taken but sounds like you're getting on much better than I did. I usually manage to get 2-3 bottles of breast milk down him a day. It is a good point re the growth spurt, ive had the same thought myself, I think just the drop in quartile was quite worrying. But you're right, wet and dirty nappies plus how they are in themselves is more important really, these babies just love to keep us on our toes!