Helping a reflux bub

Hi all,

My little one (almost 7 weeks) has reflux (of the huge gushing spew ups kind, not silent). He is on Zoton (one tablet morning, one tablet at night). I was wondering if anyone had any tips for helping his feeds go well and then helping the milk stay down. Or general other tips for dealing with a refluxy baby. How do you burb them etc...

We have tried thickened formula with a pidgeon "y" teat for thickened fluids, but he couldn't suck it well enough - he only got out 10mL in 15 minutes.

My poor little tike is a great sleeper and a placcid baby, except during feed time and shortly after.

TIA!

I think the spew will probably remain an issue and there may not be much you can do about it. My son continues to have some big spews, some days worse than others. The paediatrician says the medication won't control that. The other symptoms are mostly controlled, for us they were crying at the bottle and low intake of milk. We had to consult with a fussy feeding nurse to get some strategies to manage feed times and deal with low intake and crying at the bottle. The other thing we did (which I wouldn't do without professional advice) was to cut milk out of my diet (I"m an EE so I give breast milk via the bottle) and discovered that my son had a milk protein allergy. His fussy feeding improved greatly once I stopped having all dairy. You can still have this allergy on formula as formula has cows milk protein in it, but I wouldn't go changing that without professional advice.

aba have a good booklet on reflux with breastfeeding

I had to upgrade DS to the very fast flowing teats for his 'thickshakes' as we so lovingly call them. Other than that, keep bubby upright for 20mins or so after feeding. I found that useful. Good luck!

the spews can take a long time to ease, i continued to bf dd, i just ensured her head was elevated during feeds and of a night gave her ebm thickened when the reflux was really bad, i used the avent bottles with a variable flow teat for this, till she was older and sucked better then moved on to tommee tippee closer to nature and cut out her thickener as she stacked on heaps of weight so i cut it down gradually and she was fine. so i would ensure head elevated during feeds, do lots of burping (i burped every couple of minutes during bf and ebm), hold bub upright for 20 to 30 minutes after each feed and elevate the cot at one end. dd really did get a lot of relief from zantac, prior to that it was a lot of screaming and breast/bottle refusal to the point she was dehydrated and they finally did something about it. she has been great for a long time now and still bf, it really does get better in time, just how long it will take is individual to the baby. Being able to sit her semi upright in a swing or bouncer helped a lot too for us. goodluck i know it isnt easy with a reflux bub.

Thanks everyone! DS2 is fully formula fed, which I guess makes positioning during a feed easier! He is loving his rocker at the moment and I let him have all his day sleeps in it.

Am looking into the cows milk allergy thanks Lisa B!

Hoping for some more advice from other mums with reflux bubs. DS has now had a barium swallow and an ultrasound which showed no structural abnormalities. Though we did see the reflux. He has been on pepti-junior gold for almost a week with no significant improvement in symptoms. He is on zoton 15mg morning and night (zoton is like losec).

However, we are still getting bouts of pain after each feed (lasting from 5-50 minutes) and pain before and after spitting up. He will spit up even 3 hours after a feed.

And now to my question: if the reflux is properly medicated for, shouldn't he be better or mostly better? He is better on medicine than not, but still it is so hard to see him in pain! People have said to me "oh good this it isn't something more serious. It is just reflux." But I don't think I should still be seeing him in pain...

What do you think? Do I just have to deal with this until 6 months or should I persist with further investigations?