gripe water

[*noni*e*]

hey there
our bub is 3 weeks old and suffers from reflux originally we changed her formula because she was projectile vomiting every feed.. once we were on the ha - ar formula she stopped and has been on it for almost 2 weeks now with only a couple of feeds being vomited like that... lately shes been having reflux "attacks" each day at around 5pm she gets really bad wet sounding hiccups and is in teriblle pain.. at first we tried infacol because we thought it was just wind (which she also has trouble with) but that didn't help so someone suggested gripe water...
we tried it for the first time yesterday and within minutes she had stopped crying and was happy.. not long after that though she went to sleep and was in really deep sleep, after reading the ingredients dp realised it has alcohol in it and we wondered if that was what made her like that? today after her getting really upset i ended up giving it to her again about an hour after a big chuck again it calmed her down until she was hungry again at which point she fed but only drank 20mls and passed out cold assumably from the medicine... do u think this is halmful for her? the bottle says u can give it 6 times a day to newborns 2.5ml each time and ive only given it once a day so far and would have avoided it today if she wasnt really in pain.. is it deffinately the ethanol causing this sleepy effect or could it be shes just tired from wind and reflux all the time and when she gets releif she falls asleep??? wishful thinking maybe???
thanks in advanced i am really worried and confused...

[aussienic]

You can buy another product called "Infants Friend" It is around $5-6 a bottle and can be given at every feed. It is a natural product.. If you type it into google you can read more about it..

I don't know anything about Gripe water so can't offer any advice there

[~Lisa~]

When i had my daughter in aug/2003 The midwife told me that the only two winds meds out that wouldn't make the baby pass out was gripe water and infants friend. Maybe they recently starting adding alcohol to gripe water?

I do know for sure that infants friend is 100% herbal and worked for Chloe but not o much for Luke.

[Nadine216]

I think you can get gripe water that does not contain alcohol. Don't know if you get Telament (in water and drops) in Australia, but I know that does not contain alcohol. I used to give the drops before every feed. Do you give the gripe water before the feed? I have heard that it helps more if you give it before and not after. You could also try giving her less than the 2.5ml, say 1ml and see if that helps. If not try giving her 1.5ml and so on, kwim. Maybe if you giver her less, she would get relief, but not pass out.
And I also think that you can be right about her just passing out because she is happy and does not hurt anymore. Are they not the most gorgeous when they are sleeping
It's terrible when they cry like that. :hugs: Good luck

[katie82]

Hi!

Gripe water was my savour! My little one had colic, or what they call colic!, from almost the time he was born. You could fell the wind through his poor little belly on your hand and would scream for hours on end! In the end after many sleepless nights i went to the chemist and the pharmacist gave me gripe water that contains no alcohol.i just went and found the bottle and the brand name is Corams i actually found this one is woolworths. Its alcohol free and has no sugar etc. I found gripe water worked better than infants friend when he was really young then around 3 months we started on infants friend as well if need. Both of them apparently contain natural ingrediants that produce natural sleeping patterns..

So if you like the gripe water and find it is doing the job there is a alcohol free one out there i have it in my hot little hand has a white label with navy blue writing and pink on the label in a 200ml bottle... Hope this is some help and that little one has more sucess soon!

Katiexx

[katie82]

Ps i found that giving half before and half during was the way to go... Or if you dont stop half way all at the start.. Gives the belly time to steady itself before the intake of milk.

[scarlet121]

Hi there I am sorry to hear that you are having such a tough time. I am not sure of the brand that you are using, but it is possible that it is making her sleepy. The thing with reflux is that they are so overtierd from being on edge and not sleeping properly, that if they do have medicine sometimes it does cause them to sleep well. I don't think it is going to hurt her at all, but it is not going to do anything for the reflux.

If you are hearing wet hiccups and unhappy all day then I would look at getting her on some reflux medicines as this is acid rising and it is causing burning in her oesophageous, medicine will not stop the reflux, but will decrease the acidity and stop the burning.

If it only starts at about 5pm for a couple of hours, it is generally colic (and could be complicated by the reflux) the best way to avoid colic to to burp really well at every feed. Use infacol in the bottles to stop the air, and Dr Browns bottles work really well at decreasing the amount of air that they get.

Hopefully this will settle down soon.

[tiffanny]

I agree with others. My DD had bad colic and we did and still do give her Infants friend in her bottles. It made almost an instant difference to her.

Afterthought- I tried DD on gripe water once as I had run out of Infants friend and the pharmacy was closed and she had a bad reaction to it, she brought it back up as well as everything else in her tummy.

[Liviam]

I haven't had any success with gripe water at all so I would give infants friend a go.

Best of luck and I hope you find something that helps.

[*noni*e*]

well if anyone is interested i asked the go about it and he said the alcohol was what was making her sleepy and the med prob wasnt doing much for her except knocking her out