Reflux

[JH27]

My 7 week old has silent reflux, he was on gaviscon and it did improve his feedings but I was finding he would still have the odd painful feed and was still gagging randomly. The docs have put him on omeprazole, I have given him his first dose today and within 30 mins he’s had diarrhoea. Has anyone else found this? How long does it take to relieve symptoms?

Im not sure about the diarrhea element but is he breast / bottle fed? And did the doctor talk about a possible cows milk protein allergy? My Daughter was on infant Gaviscon for a year until we realised that actually the issue was the dairy in her diet and as soon as we cut it out, she improved

He is bottle fed, we have tried the dairy free milk and it didn’t make a difference

Ah ok fair enough, hopefully the diarrhea will settle after a few days. I think it can be a few days to a few weeks max.

Fingers crossed. It’s so hard to know what to do for the best! Pharmacist was shocked the GP has prescribed it and not the hospital!

Oh right, how come? Makes send for the GP to do it as you’re presumably discharged from hospital by now?

it’s so hard with Reflux. The constant vomiting and having to sit them upright, or is your little one not vomiting with it ?

Hi darling my little boy is on this aswel after not getting on well with gaviscon we got told could take 6 weeks for it to full have effect and he’s doing okay but does still go a little sick but the diarrhoea isn’t something I’ve really had with his meds but we did have it after taking him off gaviscon as he got so constipated from the gaviscon hope can help darling

What dairy free milk did you try and for how long?
The initial dairy free milks actually contain dairy just with the proteins broken down which is enough for some babies to not recognise it as dairy others will. You can't rule out cmpa until a fully dairy free formula has been tried these are amino acid formulas with the most common ones being alfamino and neocate. It can also take 4-6 weeks to see the improvements as it takes time for the gut to heal from the exposure to dairy before the switch.

Within half an hour it's unlikely to be the omperazole. Did you stop the gaviscon at the same time? Gaviscon causes firmer poos and often this can result in constipation. If you have stopped the gaviscon the poos will stop being as firm. If they were normal on gaviscon this could result in loose without gaviscon.

My daughter has been on omperazole since 8 weeks.... She's 5 in August! It's a good medicine for managing reflux, it might take a bit of adjusting to get on to a dose that will help. My daughter only responds to the highest doses and only when her allergies were also being treated so just something to bare in mind. She had barely any benefit from the lower doses.

I'd agree it's unlikely to be the omeprazole if it was within 30 minutes and quite possibly the adjustment from coming off gaviscon. Hopefully it settles soon.

DD2 is another reflux long timer (hi @Superscientist!), and definitely do be alert for allergies or intolerances, but sometimes reflux is just reflux. My daughter has had a couple rounds of allergy testing, I've kept food diaries, etc., and other than one possible intolerance, nothing. She's also okay on a fairly low dose of omeprazole, although we've started using gaviscon to top up during flare ups and at bedtime.

I’m not sure, I didn’t ask. He’s never sick really, if he is it’s once in a blue moon. It’s a shame as the gaviscon seemed to work at first and it did definitely help him, it just didn’t remove the random gagging and he would still have a bad feed a day.

He was on neocate, he doesn’t present with any other allergy / intolerance symptoms. GP and health visitor are both happy that it’s not allergy. The health visitor was the one who said silent reflux when we took him to be weighed and they witnessed his gagging!

If he was on neocate I'd say it's probably right then. I just see people on the hydrolysed formulas ruling it out and it's not truly been tested.
At the point of diagnosis with cmpa my daughters only symptom was silent reflux although retrospectively we realised she had loose stools that the gaviscon had been masking so it is possible to get diagnosis with cmpa with just silent reflux as the symptom.

My daughter needed gaviscon and omperazole to manage her reflux and later a third medication too. So that's something to consider. It took 4 months to get her meds right so it's not always a quick fix. This was in part because her GP was under medicating her reflux