BLS and severe reflux?

DD2 is 6 1/2 months old, we have tried a couple of things, but what she has taken (tiny amounts ie less than the size of your pinkie nail!) she ends up gagging on and then throwing up, and not just throwing up what ever solids she has but a good amount of milk as well.

She is on Losec and Gaviscon in attempt to keep her reflux at bay, she had a serve vomiting session tonight to the point we actually took her to get checked out due to the ferocity and amount, and that she had become lethargic and vague afterwards. She came good while we were in the ER and we were able to take her home again.

The Paed there said that she had a hypersensitive gag reflex and that we should start her on really watery solids and slowly thicken them up, which is completely against what I was doing. Our GP was happy for us to go down the BLS path. Both agree that she is growing well, so we don't need to try and introduce them for weight gain (shes' on the 25th%ile, length on the 75th%ile).

Has anyone had any success doing BLS with a baby with severe reflux? What age did they take to them, I don't have a problem if it takes her longer a ie couple more months before she gets into solids.

I just feel that the Paed suggestion is in the complete opposite diretion I want to go in, but I don't want to cause bigger problems by enforcing the BLS......

Any experience would be great :D TIA xx

I think if she is growing well and continues to grow well you should be able stick to your BLS.
You know my story with my little man and his reflux...we had to forgo BLS but he had serious weight issues so he needed the solids....if his weight had been ok I would have stuck with it.
Can you also try and introduce some yogurt or custard to see how she goes or do you not want to spoon feed at all?

Dunno Hun, I have eased off on ds's solids and he isn't throwing up as much, I was following him around all day cleaning him up, I think he seems more settled without the solids but now he is cranky as he wants to eat just not sure what to give him.

Not much help am I!

My bub doesn't have reflux but did the same thing at 6 months when we first started BLS- try, gag, vomit the milk from feed ages before.

Her gag reflex was just really strong. It wasn't until she was about 8 months that she actually started to swallow food, and she still doesn't eat heaps. I think BLS has been good because it taught her what she can and can't swallow and how to get the food out if it won't go down. At the start, i wasn't thinking that though:p, it was more like what am i doing, this is crazy stuff.

Babies can survive and thrive just having breastmilk until 12 months or more, so you could just wait another month or two and see how bub goes then with BLS. I didn't completely stop once i had started but (if i was feeling fragile) we might go 3-4 days without offering her food and then try again. Certain foods were more likely to trigger the gag reflex (broccoli) and others she was fine with.

good luck

Hope she is feeling better today.

Thankyou all for your replys :)

I was really dreading having to go down not only the puree path, but to basically give her liquid food :o I was wondering how long it would take to get anywhere with that, but I hope the little man that is in my head doesn't get to me ('don't cause complete solid rejection by going down the BLS path :redface:).

I will go back to just trying every few days and see how she goes, she already suffers enough from the reflux, forcing the food is just making it worse.

RB ~ A friend had a great spoon for self feeding she did BLS with her first, I am going to ask where she got it from, but it is a bit early for DD2 to give it a shot as she needs to build her fine motor skills a bit more first :)

BR ~ How frusting for you a bit of damned if you do and damned if you don't! Thankyou for asking she is a lot brighter today so hopefully it was just a once off (that we don't want to repeat again!)

HotI ~ Thanks for your experience, it is good to know that 8 months or even a bit longer isn't out of the ordinary. I will just have to continue to battle certain family members who have been on my back about solids since DD2 was 3 1/2 months :o I keep saying the same thing over and over again, it may sink in with them one day ;)

Thankyou all for taking the time to respond :D

hey Beema, I'm a bit late on your thread, but can't resist posting :D...
My kids have combined your issues between them. DS had a very sensitive gag reflex & projectile vomits on solids. He ended up refusing to even TOUCH all finger foods. We did end up having to go back to the purees for him (at 10 months!), and LOTS of very messy sloppy food play. Yoghurt was a bit winner helping us get through, and then very very easy dissolvable crackers - things like Ritz crackers & Mum Mums. Now this time around DD does have reflux (but fairly well controlled) and seems to have quite an aversion to being medicated, so BLS is working much better for her. She'll put spoons in her mouth herself quite happily (we just have to load them ) and is very happy to try all finger foods. We've had some gags and quite big spews but she's not distressed. The difference was that DS started getting quite distressed with the vomits and definitely had a negative association, whereas DD vomits then picks up the food to try again!

So I wonder if you'll be best off trying a combo and really monitoring that any vomits aren't causing distress? I think she'll lead you and show what she's enjoying most. All the best with it, I know how frustrating it is when you can see a great way to do it, but it's not working as easily as you might have hoped :hug:

Bahhh I wrote a huge post and then clicked the wrong bit so have to write it again probably shorter!

Thanks Belfie for posting I was interested to see how things have gone for you and each time has been different :)

We've had a few issues over the past few days and I am trying to ascertain the cause, DD2 got croup 4 weeks ago and has had a persistent cough and rattle since, but clear lungs and no infection so assumed it is just the "never ending" viral cough, that has continues since we started "trying solids" still don't know if this si the cause.

Today a couple of friends held DD2 and could feel her chest rattle and she was very audible in her breathing, it has grown worse over the past few days, after she sucked/gummed on a milk arrowroot she had about 1/2 of one. She ended up with a stridor and Sunday morning was showing signs of respiratory distress (neck tug), I was able to take her straight to our GP rooms, her's wasn't on but one of the others whom we haven't seen before saw her and put her on steroids for a couple of days, she has no symptoms or signs of infection, lungs are clear etc, so and the steroids really haven't made much of a difference at all so we don't think that they are the actually solving the problem. and after only 3 hours sleep Friday and Saturday night and only a bit more last night, the steroids usually work a lot better than that (we have delt with them a lot with DD1).

Today I tried a small amount of pureed pear just to see what she did, and she opened her mouth and didn't have the tongue thrust anymore, in the end she had about 1 teaspoon in total so not a lot and it was partially to appease DH ;) But after it her cough and rattle was exacerbated, she became very distressed and didn't settle until after having a boob, I couldn't put her down as it made the coughing worse and she would just get more distressed.

So I am starting to think that something else is going on, one of the mums today mentioned her DS sounded like she did and had the same rattle and it was diagnosed as "Laryngomalacia (literally, "soft larynx") is a very common condition of infancy, in which the soft, immature cartilage of the upper larynx collapses inward during inhalation, causing airway obstruction", it was also something that her Paed mentioned right when her reflux was first diagnosed. But we also want to make sure that there isn't an allergy of sorts, because of the dramatic change after the milk arrowroot biscuit.

And based on how bad things have been after the last few attempts of solids no matter what form, on top of with every other attempt resulting in throwing up, we feel that pushing it at the moment is going to create an aversion because she is getting so distressed and Belfie your experience really worries me that we could end up in a similar position.

So I am taking her back to her GP tomorrow to talk to him and see if we got back to the Paed first or to a Gastro or ENT to get things checked out before we let things get out of hand, then we can hopefully work out if we can just keep going with the BLS and do it slowly or go in another direction.

Thanks everyone xxoo

It's funny how you plan one thing for them but they have other ideas. Hope you get answers, nothing worse than having them distressed. I take cues from Ds he let's ms know if he is keen on something or not. I have learnt not to push it as dd1 had a bad gag reflex and would vomit if she didn't want food. She has only outgrown it at 3.5.

Beema how did your dd go? i know this is an old thread but i have only just come across it while researching BLS for DD2.
my DD1 has trachealaryngomalacia, so same thing but involving the trachea as well, so basically the whole windpipe collapses on itself!! she took a while to get the hang of solids, but by the time she was 10 months old she was on 5 little meals a day of solids, coping just fine, but on tube feeds for milk. she is 4 now and has a normal toddler diet :)

Hi ellasmummy :) I just saw this :redface:

We saw her Paed and he put her on venotlin and is keeping a close eye on her, she has a wheeze on the right side constantly, and her chest x-ray shows thickening of the peribroncial walls, which indicates that she has been working hard to breathe for a while, he also wants to keep a check on her reflux and he wanted to see her at 12 months, and inbetween if we have any concerns.

DD2 started to reall take to solids about 9-9 1/2 months of age, she had a good couple of weeks, where she was into the self feeding and DH and I were both amazed how she suddenly just "got it" and then got quite sick (RSV, Pneumonia and a UTI ended up in hospital for 5 days and under daily nursing care for 4 prior to that!) and didn't eat anything for 2 weeks, but since she has gotten better she is going great guns, she gags on anything mushy like mashed potato we haven't done any puree's at all, but she can chew down on a piece of schnitzel amazingly well, loves vegies, meat, toast etc. She does sound quite rattly when she eats, and coughs up quite a bit, but really I think she is doing quite well :)

We have to go back to the Paed now, I need to ring up and make an appointment as the Paeds at the hospital wanted her checked within the month, we were going to do it after she has her scan on her kidneys to check that the refluxing fromt he UTI hasn't caused any significant scarring or damage, but that isn't until the 29th September so the day before her 1st birthday, so we will end up having a couple of Paed appointments now.

We had her off the Losec while she was in hospital as she wasn't drinking and I was hoping we may be able to get rid of it but as she increased her feeds she refluxed more and got more rattly. But she doesn't seem as rattly now except for when she is eating, but she is coughing in her sleep and it is waking her up and I am wondering if I should try putting her back on Gaviscon to thicken her feeds especially before sleeping to see if that helps but I am not sure what the issue is, but she isn't sleeping and neither am I so all very exhausting at the moment, but we'll get there :)

We did have one choking episode, that was horrifically scary, and really freaked us out for a while, but DD2 insisted on feeding herself so we didn't really have mich choice and she hasn't had an incident since :D