Solids at 4 months

[trishalishous]

Solids made no difference to DDs reflux

[luna moth]

Thats really interesting, why do they recomend it then?

Because in theory, it works. In practice, lots of babies grow out of reflux anyway around that time, so it appears to work. It's also very hard to actually test any of these theories to provide the evidence.

As for PZ's money theory, it wouldn't surprise me at all if Mr Farex and Mr Heinz had funded a "study" that showed that it has some effect.

[HotI]

Possibly another reason is because doctors want to give you advice, something to do, and as parents we find it easier to 'do' something to try to fix what is hurting our kids, rather than hope it fixes itself.

[ellasmummy]

My dd2 has quite severe silent reflux, solids didn't help one bit at 10 months we've just had a trial off Losec with a massive FAIL

[*EJ*]

I would have to also add to the solids making no difference to relux here for my DD.

I haven't throughly read all posts but at almost 4 months has you DD's swallowing reflex changed?

If not you could try to put things in your DD's mouth that she'll spit right back out.

DS2 took ages to get this side of it even at almost 6 months old, we would end up in the biggest messes with hardly any food being swallowed at all.

[chody47]

We too were recommended to start DD on solids at 4 months because of her reflux. I'm not sure if it 'helped' as such, she was still throwing up an awful lot of milk, but she did seem to keep some solids down, provided she didn't have milk too soon after them. I often found that if she had milk too soon, the food would also come up with the milk....not a nice thing when it's pumpkin or carrot - everything ended up being stained orange! Her reflux didn't really stop til 7-8 months; 3-4 months after starting solids.....so I'm not sure that was the solution at all (that being said, she loved her food right from the start - so at least she was happy lol!)

[onthefly]

I've just read through Colic Solved - he talks about reflux (not colic) and reckons it might be worth a shot, but in his experience about 1/3 gets better (less vomiting, reflux itself is not better), 1/3 same and 1/3 much worse.

[glenny_c]

I think the reason it appears to work is that often, babies will improve a lot once they can sit. So often it's around the 4-6 month mark when they start to see improvements. My DD had silent reflux and started to improve when she was sitting. It was about 8 months when we could wean her off the meds, and it seemed to be that the more time she spent sitting in the day, the better she got.

[onthefly]

ah! gravity! that makes sense. so try sitting them up more for a bit before solids maybe?

[Lolpigs]

ah! gravity! that makes sense. so try sitting them up more for a bit before solids maybe?

Yeah I've been trying this mad, Lilly almost hates lying down. She is constantly trying to clench her tummy so sit up so spends most of her time in her bouncer, and recently I bought her a bumbo, which she loves but cant use after a feed or she spews from the pressure on her stomach.

Shes just learnt to flip onto her stomach and the extra practise and pressure has cuased her reflux to worsen and become painful again so shes back on meds ;( heres hoping the sitting up does the trick.

[TaRhLi.]

Solids made no difference to my DS2's (second twin) reflux. They are 9 mths old now and he will still bring back food although it finally is getting less and less, and this is with him spending most of his awake time either sitting or standing.

I found that purees were too runny and wouldn't stay down with him at all and I was adding thickener to them to make them more 'bulky' in his tummy, and with rice cereals I was having to make them into more of a paste consistency, but as I said they still came back up - not all of it but some. To give you an idea how bad he was I have only just dropped the amount of thickener in his 220ml bottle down from 5 scoops to 4 and he has been of 5 scoops pretty much since he went up to that level of formula.

Unfortunately with some babies solids will help but others it won't and they have to just grow out of it. DD had reflux and solids helped her, DS1 (first twin) has never had any issues and DS2 still has it. So it is all trial and error but it may not fix the problem.