Reflux sleep - advice needed!

[lbandrb]

DS is 12 weeks and has reflux (mostly silent but recently there's been more sicking up). He's now on Ranitidine but it's too early to know if it's helping. We've always had a number of sleep issues with him, and everything has got much worse with the reflux, with disordered sleep day and night. I have a few questions I'd love any help with! Sleep is so hard now that I am questioning everything I do and trying to work out where I may be going wrong.

Apols in advance for this lengthy post. Three questions, really...

How can I keep him 'upright' after his final feed of the night and still help him go to sleep? Until now we'd feed lying down side by side (once he had had an initial brief sleep in the sling) and he was sufficiently sleepy and relaxed to feed himself to sleep. Now he can still do so but wakes after circa 1 hr due to the reflux. He doesn't like to lie on top of me after a feed. I've just bought a cot wedge which I hope will help - could this be enough? Could I feed him lying down on his side then transfer him to the cot-wedged bed with no issues? Any other tips (?), as he is so hard to get to sleep - if I feed him upright it won't ease him to sleep as well as lying down!

Would lying him down to change his nappy after a feed disrupt the 'keep upright' rule enough to trigger the reflux?

Any thoughts about how I can get him to do his daytime sleeps (he now keeps waking up from almost every one after 35-38 mins) with minimum exhaustion risk? He generally needs constant motion and fresh air, so I am walking for hours a day - horrendous given how little I am sleeping. He's sleeping so lightly that I worry about waking him up if I stop moving. Can I judge the sleep cycles somehow to get a break from all this walking? Perhaps I am taking him out for a walk too early / late so I am also wasting too much time getting him to sleep. How quickly should I respond to sleep signs? The first yawn? Several yawns? Eyes rubbing?

Hi, you have my sympathy, reflux is pants :( my DS had it quite badly and now DD (7weeks) has it, but luckily this time we recognized the symptoms and she is on meds already.
How long has your DS been on ranitidine for?
Hopefully once he's on the right dies his symptoms will ease off if not disappear, so his sleep will improve.
I never worried with DS about keeping him upright after eve/ nighttime feeds, because it would make getting him to sleep more difficult and in the night he didn't seem that bothered with reflux.
In our case tilting the cot didn't work because he would move and wake up across it or upside down....
Regarding naps, have you tried pushing him in the pram at home with some white noise? This is what I'm doing with DD as I write...

My sympathy too - my dd had it and it was hell. She is now 8 months and it all seems like a distant memory if that helps at all - it really did totally disappear once she could sit up/was on solids.

(she also didn't improve til we put her on omeprazole btw, but that is a separate issue)

The cot wedge was fantastic for night feeds, transferring with a lot of sshh-ing and patting/rocking the basket or cot. Or rocking - we rocked and rocked! Although like Duende the reflux wasn't as much of a prob at night (it used to start at about 3pm and then ramp up to about 4/5 hours crying).

I was religious about not changing her nappy after a feed in the day for half an hour - no idea if that helped or not. I also sort of managed to change her nappy whilst upright!

Re naps - I am with Duende - rock them in the hallway/over a bumpy carpet to sleep in the pram and then just when they usually wake up go and gently rock them again, def with white noise. I lived in a flat so used to go out walking for ages til I thought of staying in and rocking - so much less exhausting! Although the walking did wonders for losing pregnancy weight...

Realised belatedly I had responses to this! Thanks, both. The Ranitidine (a week and a half on) is definitely helping but sleep is still tricky, day and night. I too have been trying to avoid nappy changes or any other need to lie upright for circa 30 mins after a feed. Tricky! I've done sitting-up nappy changes with varying degrees of success! I'm convinced that reflux makes his sleep lighter and therefore more easily disturbed - that's the main issue, really. I'm going to try the indoors pram strategy - good call.