Weaning early to help reflux

[m4rdybum]

LG is currently 15 weeks and suffers with reflux. In a day, she will probably sick up about 50% of her bottle intake, although not in one go.

She is on ranitadine and I have tried milk thickener, but that just gave her very delayed poos (although she has these to begin with).

She takes between 7-8oz a day.

I have bought some baby rice (which I know isn't a mumsnet favourite) and am thinking about introducing it at 17-18 weeks. I'm only talking about a few spoonfuls before a bottle, and obviously not replacing any milk feeds with it.

I know the guidelines are currently set at 6 months.

I'm just looking to see if it helped anyone else with their reflux issues?

You are right to delay weaning until 17 weeks OP. This is the very earliest, any earlier and the research suggests it may have adverse effects.

How much formula is she actually drinking in a day and what does she weigh?

Is she following her centiles?

And have you tried a Comfort formula?

Baby rice won’t help at all, and will probably cause you more issues due to her stomach now having to digest another product.

Also read up about arsenic in rice products for infants, some may be ok with it but I certainly wasn’t risking dd.

You need to get in touch with your GP and work out a way to move forward which may include food to relieve her reflux.

I weaned both my children at 16 weeks on medical advice because of reflux.

It was solid food or let him starve for my eldest.

I don't remember using baby rice. Think we went straight onto fruit and vegetables.

Has your DR looked into the possibility of a CMPA causing the reflux? It's important to do that before you start weaning and giving them a load of dairy that will just make them ill.

Like Fatted says, it might be useful to look into the possibility of Cow's Milk Allergy, particularly Cow's Milk Protein Allergy (CMPA) as this may be the cause of the vomiting and reflux symptoms. Generally, reflux is a symptom rather than a diagnosis so you need really to find out what's causing it.

There's some information from Allergy UK here.

HTH

On my GP and HV advice, I started weaning my DC early due to reflux. We started at 22 weeks and introduced vegetables.

To be honest I think the main benefit was that by the time DC reached 6 months and could 'officially' have food, they were already used to the process of eating and so got on a bit faster with having meals. With hindsight I don't see that starting earlier than we did would have been useful, it probably would have just been messier!

It definitely wasn't an instant cure for the reflux, the amount they eat to begin with is so small. From memory, it wasn't until they were 8 months and on 3 meals a day (plus milk) that things settled, and we weaned off the reflux medication at 9 months with no issues.

As a side note, maybe ask your GP about omeprazole instead of ranitidine. It took about 3 weeks to work for us, but when it did it made a significant difference.

Reflux can be awful, for baby and parents. I hope things improve for you soon.

We weaned at four months due to reflux on the advice of peadriatric dietician and it took a while but we have seen huge improvements since! We have minimal vomiting, he sleeps so well at night and we have completely taken him off the ranitadine.

Maybe speak to your health visitor first as every baby is different.

Good luck to you 😊

I started DS on baby rice at 17 weeks as I was overwhelmed by constant bf. It was way too early and I gave up. I started again at 5 months, and he really got it at 5.5 months. In retrospect I should have held off until he showed more obvious signs of readiness. It definitely has helped with the vomiting, which DS used to do all day long.

I would speak to your GP or dietician about it.

Baby rice is literally just ground up rice. It is no more or less nutritious than anything else rice based.

My 6 month old has suffered with reflux since birth, and we found the best combination was gaviscon and lactulose, the gaviscon also thinkens the milk to help it stay down, and the lactulose helps with constipation. We found after a few weeks on gaviscon constipation was no longer an issue and stopped the lactulose.
We found with ranitidine the sickness was no better only the acidity.