Weaning a baby with bad reflux

[RedHerring24]

DD is 6 months old and we have started the weaning journey.
She has suffered from silent reflux since birth and is on medication to control this.
We were warned by a paediatrician that weaning will be hard as she is unlikely to take to strong flavours well as they may cause the reflux to worsen.
Example being we cannot give things like Calpol as it is very sweet and makes her projectile vomit if she even licks the end of the syringe.

Ive started off with basic veg like peas, carrots, potato, some fruit like mango and strawberry (which made her gag and almost vomit) and she has been offered some puree from the Ellas kitchen pouches as we got some free.

Does anyone have any tips they can offer for a reflux baby?
Should i just go ahead and work as though she doesnt have reflux and see how she does or should I be mindful and give very bland things first?

Hi, DD is now 16 and has had silent reflux since she was a baby. Weaning helped her, she was much more content and put on weight. For weaning, we had to avoid acidic foods , so very little fruit. It was obvious that it made her reflux worse. But other than that, DD ate most things and had no problems with strong flavours, she was very enthusiastic about the whole thing. She liked stews, pasta, risottos, veggies, anything really, provided it was not milk ( which I think she associated with pain). I found weaning a huge relief as her reflux improved a lot on weaning and she ate and slept much better and was much happier. Good luck OP, perhaps weaning will help your DD too.

How's it going now @RedHerring24?

We have had some good days and some bad so far.
Initially purees seemed to go down relatively well, as long as I didn't try to feed her and she did it all by herself. Until she rammed the spoon in her mouth, made herself gag and now doesn't want to touch a spoon again.
I started giving her veg as finger foods and some went down better than others. She seems to love strawberry and it doesn't seem to have made her reflux worse.
But there are days where she will sit in her highchair and just scream and will not take a single thing.
On the whole her reflux has been ok, but then she isn't really taking alot of the foods/purees I offer.

Poor little love. We had a total spoon refuser as well.

How is she with things like toast or pancakes and has she ever shown any signs of an allergy?

I had a baby with bad reflux. Like pp, anything acidic comes straight back up - pineapple, melon, watermelon has all been a disaster. I followed the Ellas Kitchen plan in the purple food, which is all veg to begin and very little fruit. This worked really well for us. I then introduced fruit a bit later on.

We started at 6months and really the first 6 weeks were pretty pointless. Nothing went in. Lots came back out. But then we turned a corner and she suddenly started to hoover up food.

Porridge has always been a good staple for us so i mix all sorts of fruit into it now, which seems to be better tolerated. Same with greek yoghurt. I've not had an issue with strong flavours but I have introduced spices quite slowly so perhaps that has helped?

Finger foods are much preferred to spoons here too. I think so she can control what goes in? Once we hit 8 months, i introduced loads of finger foods from the What Mummy Makes book, and it's been much better.

I've found that anything acidic like fruit is better tolerated which is weird?! She seems happier gumming on large strawberries, mango etc. But then she is in medication to control her reflux.
So far I have literally stuck to the fruit and veg and haven't ventured into toast, porridge etc. Although I have bought porridge to make up for her.
I've read up so much on weaning that I honestly don't know if I am doing the right thing.
I'm making up pureed fruit and veg as single flavours and will offer this with a finger food version of it too.
She is happy to take finger foods, especially parsnips, sweet potato, mango etc and will gum on it happily.
I'm just not sure when to change it up and offer what I would class as 'normal' food like porridge and toast?

On the allergy front, we are undecided.
The GP is treating ger for CMPA so she has been on prescription formula for a while. I wouldn't say I'm convinced about this as she has never had a rash or anything when I was breastfeeding and not cutting out dairy?

I've got CMPA and I've never had a rash OP. Could it be non-ige?

I guess it could be non-ige?
The GP we saw wasn't that helpful to be fair. She started with acid reflux symptoms, the constant swallowing when laying flat, burping alot and crying. She never cried when feeding though.
We were given Gaviscon to try which initially helped for a couple of weeks but then the symptoms got worse and we were prescribed formula. The symptoms didn't change after this so we were then given Omeprazole which was an absolute game changer.
Shes still on a combination of all of the above as the GP would commit to changing ger plan if she was feeding well. Occasionally the reflux symptoms will creep back in so the dose of Omeprazole increases and she's fine again.
We did try reintroducing normal formula milk a couple of times and she did vomit immediately. But then she is prone to the odd vomit now and again anyway.
I think weaning will really help us see if she does have an intolerance of some sort. It's just adding in dairy etc very slowly and waiting for whatever will follow!

@PritiPatelsMaker what symptoms do you have if you don't mind me asking?

Pretty much the same as reflux, gas, swollen hard tummy, irritability, pain, diarrhoea or constipation or swinging between the two.

If I completely cut out dairy all of these magically vanish.

I'm not saying she had CMPA, just that it's worth ruling out if the equation

@PritiPatelsMaker thank you for your reply.
I'm defo not going to rule out CMPA until I've managed to try some dairy and see how she does.
Its going to be a long old road I think!