Reflux questions?

[AllyBuckeye]

My daughter was diagnosed with reflux at 3 weeks old. She is now almost 6 weeks old and we are still trying to figure out how best to help her. She is now on Zantac and it seems to be helping but only minimally at best. I'm also not a huge fan of medicating her. We've elevated her bassinet to a 30 degree angle, hold her upright after feeding and I've stripped my diet of any potentially irritating foods. But we are still dealing with lots of evenings/nights of tears and crying which we believe is related to the reflux. We've also tried to supplement with probiotics.. no improvement there as well. It is heartbreaking to see my daughter in pain. I want to do everything I can to help her. Any suggestions?

[~Adorkable~]

no real ideas, just a hug

you might want to post this in life with babe or something like that to get more new mommies.

and most of al Welcome To MDC!!

[sbgrace]

I understand the hesitation to meds. My son wasn't medicated and he ended up in really horrible shape by three months. I won't go into (horrific) detail and he was an especially severe case but a true reflux baby needs and deserves relief from the pain. If it doesn't happen you can end up with major issues like failure to thrive, food refusal, and the emotional and developmental impacts of constant pain at that young age.

Zantac won't work or won't work long for a true reflux baby. They build tolerance very quickly to H2 blockers. There is a website called marci kids that I strongly recommend you read through. I hope it will help you see that kids who truly reflux need a PPI and at her age it needs to be dosed three times per day.

Other suggestions (might help, might not..I wouldn't spend tons of time on this as pain has serious effects as I said above and none of them helped my son much other than 60 degree sleeping elevations...but we tried them all and they do help some babies. His stuff was structural.)

1. eliminate allergens from your diet if nursing (dairy, wheat, egg, soy). Look into hypoallergenic formula if not nursing. Food allergies are not the root of all reflux. I think a lot really is structural but they are the root of some reflux cases. Make sure the probiotics used are allergen free as well. Klaire labs makes good allergy free probiotics including an infant one.
2. cranial sacral or chiropractic care helps some (not my son but I felt the cranial sacral held more promise for us at the time)
3. Tucker sling to elevate the baby 60 degrees. I did feel this helped my son but they are expensive. I gave mine away when we were done and felt good about that but at the time they were reselling well too.

[rileyscoutmom]

My baby had horrible reflux and at one time it even caused her to stop breathing and turn blue . . . there is a website called infantreflux that has forums with lots of help and discussion and they too recommend the marci kids website pp mentioned.

Other things that often work well . . .
Babywearing - my baby cried 24/7 for the first 7 months of her life and would not be put down. It helped us both.

Definitely the bed elevation. Keep baby close so that when she wakes you can stick out a hand and rock/soothe.

We used an amby bed and I loved it, but it is my understanding that they may have been recalled. I am not sure about this.

I'll be honest and say that in the end we ended up having to put our baby to sleep on her tummy to help with the reflux. Tummy sleeping is not recommended by doctors and can increase your child's risk of SIDS. Our baby was on an apnea monitor because of the previously mentioned episode which is the only reason I did it.

We did end up using Neocate with our baby and it made perhaps the biggest difference.

Probiotics, probiotics, probiotics. Research shows that something like 80% of babies with reflux are helped by probiotics. Get a good, multi strain probiotics that must be referigerated. Klaire labs is a good one.

Swaddling helped a lot.

And get a lot of support . . . a baby with reflux is hearbreaking and hair tearing.

[californiajenn]

Dairy is a huge contributor to relux. Eliminating it would be the first thing I did. Do a search and you'll find lots of threads on this subject.

[lily7]

Both of my kids had reflux, my younger son was throwing up at least once a day, even through his nose. That always scared me to death and I cried a lot from not being able to help him.
What helped my older son was sucking a pacifier, it helps some children but may make things worse as well.
Nothing really was helping my younger son, I tried Zantac for 2 days and he hated it so much and it wasn't helping him at all, so we stopped. I totally changed my diet for couple of weeks and it had no effect. Chiro treatments helped little. He would not take a pacifier. My belief is in our case it was more of a structural issue than dietary. So I carried him in the Moby most of the day. He slept a lot on my chest. Also he was really better when I did not move him at all after feeding. So at night I would nurse him in bed lying sideways and he would sleep next to me on his side.
Just remember it will get better. Hugs...

[kjbrown92]

Originally Posted by AllyBuckeye

My daughter was diagnosed with reflux at 3 weeks old. She is now almost 6 weeks old and we are still trying to figure out how best to help her. She is now on Zantac and it seems to be helping but only minimally at best. I'm also not a huge fan of medicating her. We've elevated her bassinet to a 30 degree angle, hold her upright after feeding and I've stripped my diet of any potentially irritating foods. But we are still dealing with lots of evenings/nights of tears and crying which we believe is related to the reflux. We've also tried to supplement with probiotics.. no improvement there as well. It is heartbreaking to see my daughter in pain. I want to do everything I can to help her. Any suggestions?

What are the foods you stripped? The most common food intolerances, which are dairy, gluten, soy, and corn are in 80% of the food supply. You have to be careful of meds and supplements as well. Any food can cause any symptom though.

Craniosacral therapy was recommended. We have a fantastic osteopath who does osteopathic manipulation (a little different).

www.reflux.org is another website with forum boards (I think it's sponsored by Neocate though; can't remember).

It can be structural. It can be food. It could be a combination. For us it was food. And when we eliminated the trigger foods, both my kids were taken off the reflux meds.