silent reflux - when does it stop?

Hi everyone!

I haven't been around for a long time and since I was last here it was in the m/c forum. Now am mum to 11 wk old Jake - who happens to have silent reflux.

He had the classic symptons from day dot really - now I think about it we used to pace the hospital hallways with him on our shoulder every night bcos he wouldn't settle - but wasn't diagnosed until 4wks and didn't start Losec until 5wks. Jake is on 20mg per day which I dissolve in BM and syringe in as part of our pill / bath / bed routine.

I was wondering at what stage do you drop the cot flat, and start stepping back the meds? My paed said to start now and see if we get a reaction, but honestly (and probably a bit selfishly) I am too scared that we will go all the way back to where we were. My GP has given me 2 more repeats before I need to go back for a full review.

:confused:

hi nelly, sorry you have a refluxer, its not fun is it?!

Archie was finally diagnosed with severe reflux at 4 months and has been on 10mg Losec ever since. For the last 6 weeks or so his reflux has been mainly silent, and in the last couple weeks we haven't had a bad episode of reflux. He still constantly has to wear bibs to catch little spews and if i don't have the cot propped up he spews quite abit during the night. I honestly think he should have been on stronger dose of Losec, but never questioned the doc about it, the Losec finally seems to be the right dose now and theres no way i will start weaning him off it yet. i forgot to give it to him a week ago and he had terrible silet reflux.

It is all very dependant on each individual child unfortunately, thats what makes it so hard to deal with, if i were you i would probably just keep giving it to him til his next full review.

HTH i was rambling a fair bit, but goodluck with it i hope he can come off the meds soon

Matilda's reflux settled around 8 months. Some people say it should go around 6 months when they start to eat solids, but Matilda's didn't. Hers settled when she was cruising furniture and getting ready to walk. There was a thread on this ages ago but its been archived & I can't find it.

Yay another 3-6mths to go!
A lady at my mothers group was told by her natropath to give her daughter weak camomile tea. Both of my twins have it, Gemma is the power chucker and Teagan has the more painful silent reflux, although they do swap from time to time. On Sunday poor Gemma was in agony and I made up the tea, it worked a treat, almost straight away she calmed down. Just an idea.

Thanks girls - it's funny how you think you are getting on top of it and then you have a bad episode and, well it's back to no way am I taking you off that medication!

Hopefully only 3-6 months to go!

Any tips on how to get his wind up - he's really resisting it and it's causing him heaps of pain.

Cheers :)

Hi Nelly,
Having a refluxer is no fun is it. Tarleha was diagnosed with it at 2 weeks and has been on meds from 4 weeks of age. She was a power chucker but that subsided at 4 months, and now has silent reflux and is still on meds and she i now 7mnths and it doesn't look like it is going anywhere for a while. My paed. said it couldlast until she's 1.

As for wind i copped a double whammy Tarleha had colic as well. We used to use the infant friend drops and they helped a little bit. We also used tolay her on her back and push her legs up into her tummy and sometimes that would release the wind. When she was about 3mnths we started: i sat crossed legged and laid her across my legs on her belly so there was a gap for her belly and patted her on the back like playing the drums and after a while she seemed to bring it up, other than that i just put up with it. But thankfully she has now grown out of that just recently i think she was 6mnths.

Hope that helps

Reflux can bean extremely serious condition. Fergus still suffers from chronic reflux (as opposed to silent) and is still very much a power chucker. Three times a day most days. Officially he went off Losec at 8 months but was seriously failing to thrive due to his inability to take and retain enough food. Just to give you a mental picture - in December he weighed 6.5kg at 18 months of age!! We now need to gastric tube feed him an entirely liquid diet (with continuous overnight pump feeds as well as three times a day) to try to heal his gastro-intestinal system and help him to put on weight.

Although I didn't start this thread it has been extremely helpful. My girlfriend and I were discussing reflux and she also mentioned that her son had wind a lot and my twins do to. I thought it was something they got from their father, LOL. But apparently it is common for reflux babies to suffer from it as well. Thanks for the tips.

Riley is on reflux medication (Losec - the BEST thing ever invented) and I wouldn't even consider cutting him back yet...on the rare occasion that he spews it up, the next day is a shocker! He screams in pain because of the reflux...so I guess that means he still needs the meds.

I have a friend who had a baby with the exact same symptoms who is now 16 months old and still on Losec so I don't think we'll get off it any time soon... But while it works, I'm all for it!!! :)

Well we've just tried weaning off the infacol and have had a week of belly pains. Needless to say he's back on it!

We kept Riley on his Infacol drop until about a mont ago (say about 5 months old) and he doesn't seem to need them any more. But he still has his Losec... We had trouble getting it down last week and we paid for it...he was squealing in pain day & night... I think if the Infacol works for Jake then keep him on it! :)

This is taken from the RISA website - Reflux Infants Support Association:

"Reflux commonly presents with vomiting or posseting but there are other signs children can present with. Some babies reflux without it coming out of their mouths (termed silent reflux) which can cause more damage, but be more difficult to diagnose. The term ‘Silent Reflux’ can be confusing, because silence is generally not one of the signs they exhibit."

My GP told me yesterday that in his experience a large percentage of mothers with presumed PND (ie not medically diagnosed but everyone has told her all the crying and not liking her baby is PND) have a reflux baby. When he sees these mums the first thing he does is check the baby if you fix the baby, nine times out of ten you fix the mum too. (He is also experienced first hand having had a reflux baby himself.)

I'm not trying to say that PND isn't a real issue bcos I know it is having suffered from it after my first miscarriage (and spending months on Zoloft and in counselling), however on this occasion it was my experience that Jake's silent reflux, my lack of sleep etc were manifesting themselves as depression. Bcos we caught the reflux early my depression didn't downward spiral as it potentially could have.

It's really nasty - I don't know which is worse having a baby that screams 8-10 hours a day with no visible reason or a projectile vomiter who screams all day as well....