reflux, unsettled and no smiles

hi my 6wk old daughter was just diagnosed with reflux she i a very unhappy baby and has yet to give us any smiles as she is rarely happy when shes awake. I was just woundering if anyone has had the same problem should i be concerned that there is something else wrong?........ I have been worried sick ever since ive looked up about babies not smiling andit said something about autism....... so could i just be looking into things to much or is it normal for unsettled babies not to be smiling at 6wks??

Hi Motherof2

Babies smiles come at different times depending on the baby. 6 weeks is still young. But I will share my story with you

my dd smiled early, 2 weeks old. (not wind!, real smiles). A couple of weeks later we noticed she hadn't been smiling at all, gone from a seemingly happy baby to one that seemed rather sad :(. She also had a lot of reflux symptoms and was crying in pain alot. She was our first baby, but luckily we felt something was very wrong. I thought it may be reflux so we tried some of the measures suggested like raising her cot, keeping her upright, though it didnt seem to help much at all. We took her to the doctor who diagnosed acid reflux. She was put on Losec tablets at 5 weeks old. It took about 7-10 days for the tablets to work. Then we had our happy baby back. Shes now 7 months old, still on tablets but is doing fantastic. Having a baby in pain all day was very stressful for us, and although I hated having to put a very young baby on medication, it has worked wonders and wouldn't have it any other way now. She would litterally scream and cry in pain all day. (apparently the relux may not as been bothering her as much at first eg first 2 weeks but as time went on it burnt/irritated her oesophagus, which caused her alot of pain, once tablets worked it stopped being irritated)

I'm sure your baby girl will be smiling at you very soon. Is her reflux servere? is she on medication?

yes she was put on losac yesterday so hopefully as with your little bub in time she will become the happy smiling girl ive always wanted. I have also tried everything else they have recommended like elevating the cot and change table and keeping her upright but to no avail. I am actually in hospital with her now for a different reason but all the nurses have commented that they are pretty sure its reflux i am going to be pushing for a barium swallow test. Thankyou for your story it gives me a glimmer of hope that i will have a happy baby soon

My bub has had tummy issues, and you can definitely tell the difference between when she is unsettled and when there is no colic/reflux. Hope you get some smiles soon!

take care, Kate

yep - I had a colicy refluxy baby as well and we didn't get many smiles. When we made all the changes, different formula, raising cot, change table, sitting as upright as we could we still didn't get many. I eventually worked out that when I was looking at her I was frowning, waiting for something to happen - I wasn't smiling at her :rolleyes: So every morning I spent half an hour just smiling at her, singing her songs and then in the evening, I gave her a massage singing songs and smiling.

We then got smiles and laughs and everyone in the family was much happier. I don't want to say that you aren't smiling at your DD enough, but that is what was happening to us. I didn't know I wasn't smiling until someone pointed it out to me. With DD2 I smiled a lot more and even though she also had reflux we got smiles much earlier

HTH