Reflux and Spitting Up - Louisville,KY

Oh, geez, do I ever remember reflux problem! My son was born preemie (2mos preemie) and was diagnosed w/G.E.R. (gastroesophagael reflux). To put it lightly, he couldn't hold ANYTHING down. By 4 months he only weighed 11 lbs. We did everything you have said you are doing, but eventually had to have him admitted at Riley's Children's Hospital in Indpls., IN. There we seen a Dr. Fitzgerald who specialized w/this type of problem. He stated that our son was born too early, therefore his little valve that held food down, but allowed air to escape, was not yet formed completely yet. He had put my son on the medicine called Reglan which is used to relax the stomach muscle. Then, we had to ALWAYS keep our son in a upright position for up to 2 hours during and after feeding. In his crib we had to keep him reclined in an upright position by placing him in a "pumpkin seat". This assured that his food digested before he could vomit it up again. We were, also, not allowed to burp him, and was given drops for gas, we were told to not move him around much until at least an hour after his feeding, then try to burp him after the hour, but only if he acted like he was colicky. Another suggestion was to place him-supervised-in a "pumpkin seat" right after his feeding on top of our washing machine that was set on the spin cycle. The vibrating would help bring up gas bubbles w/little spit-up. All of these had worked. Needless to say, on December 24th, my son never again vomited. It was the best Christmas present we could've ever received! I hope this helps some. I know exactly how hard it is to deal w/this sort of problem. My prayers go out to you.

D. Blackford,
Professional Psychic Intuitive
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My niece had milk and soy "protein" (not the lactose) intolerance and reflux. My daughter was born with the same problems. I know what a nightmare it is to not be able to comfort them! We eventually ended using Neocate formula and Prilosec, which worked well for her. My niece was on Neocate and Prevacid. (I personally take Prevacid and find it to work very, very well.)

Milkworks in Lincoln, NE started a suport group a couple of years ago for MSPI (milk/soy protien intorance). Reflux seemed pretty common with the MSPI. Milkworks number is ###-###-####. If you are not in Lincoln, they may be able to give you info over the phone to help you decide if this is the problem.

My niece has also seen a GI specialist in Omaha since she was a baby. There are a couple GI doctors there that specialize in MSPI (I think Dr. Dean Antsonson is one of them.)

Our pediatrician told us that she should outgrow the reflux. (I think we stopped the Prilosec when she was about 1-1/2.)

Both my kids are/were in that wonderful group of baby spitters...ick. My son was on LactoFree which helped but he still spit. My little girl was on Zantac and she spit a little less I think. She has been on Enfamil AR which has the rice starch but is milk based and I don't think it did much good either. Now that she is taking more solids she is doing quite a bit better about the spitting. The main thing with this is if your baby is gaining enough weight. Some babies just are spitters and it's no fun. Seeming as he is spitting up the food too I'd ask the Dr. if there's something else you can try.

I'm sure you have heard it from your pediatrician but most children grow out of reflux and spitting up. My daughter (now 3 yrs) was born with a diaphragmatic hernia where her insides were up in her left chest cavity preventing the lung from expanding. She also had problems eating normally and when she finally got the hang of it, had relfux. The pediatric specialist at Riley Hospital gave her Zantac and Reglan. She weened off the Reglan pretty quickly b/c it helps keep foods in the "downward" cycle. I had to constantly take her back to the dr. to get her Zantac does higher as she gained weight. What happens is the more weight they gain the more (tiny bit) Zantac they need. I also had my daughter on a very soothing formula called Similac Soy or you can try the Nestle Good Start soy. I also bought the premixed and just warmed it up for her too. That seemed to work better than me mixing it myself with the clumps in the powder and water. The rice in the bottle also helped her but you have to make the hole in the nipple a bit bigger. I just took a fork and poked it in the hole a bit and that worked for her. The other thing you could try are the Dr. Brown bottles. Yes, they are a bit pricey but they really worked for her when we switched!

I hope this advice helps! Take care and good luck! My daughter was not taken off Zantac til she was 2 yrs and 2 months old and now is perfectly fine!!

A. C.

HI C.,

We still deal with reflux and my 18 month old. He has also had it since birth. I found that the best thing to get him to sleep a bit better was to incline his matress just a bit so that his head was higher than his feet. When he was teeny tiny he pretty much slept in a boppy the whole time. He also took Zantac every day. Something else, that may seem a bit strange. My son goes to the chiropractor. Not for ajustments, but there is a massage techinque for relieving the pressure from a hernia. It is a basic procedure and is easy to do. Basically, it is a gentle "tugging" from under the left ribcage. So, you may try that. I hated the fact that my son was on medication every day and once we started seeing the chiropractor things were much better.

My nephew has acid reflux and has had it since he was a baby. He has been on several things, such as zantac and reglan. The reglan can have side effects but it worked for awhile. The doctor ended up placing him on prevacid. i also work in a pharmacy and this is a popular one. It comes several ways. It comes in a powder, a dissoving tablet, a capsule. It seems to work wonders.

Good morning C., I understand what u are going through. I have a 4 year old son, when he was 2 days old we started noticing he was spitting up everything, he would wake up in his own vomit with his hair and crib covered in vomit. We took him to the doctor they told us it was just spit up but we knew it wasnt normal, after all he was doing the projectile vomit from one end of the room to the other. We kept going back to the doctor and they told us the same thing till we changed doctors, that was a god send. The new doctor check my son out and found out that he was allegic to the prosobee he was being fed since birth, it turns out he was allergic to soy, everything soy and the formula wasnt settling in his stomach because it was soy and too thin. He took him off the prosobee and gave him Enfamil AR with the rice already added. We were adding rice to the prosobee before we saw the new doctor but because of the soy allergy it didnt help. The Enfamil AR helped along with Zantac, after about a month it was helping anymore so he switched us to Prilosec, its a little bit of a dose for babies but we gave it to him in his gerber foods (we opened the capsule) and still gave him Enfamil AR. At 9 months he was perfect. Enfamil AR and Prilosec saved his stomach,(the doctor also did a barium swallow) if it didnt help they were considering surgery, which I didnt want. He slept well, stopped waking up choking on his vomit, we didnt have to keep the big pocket bibs on him anymore. PLEASE.. talk to the doctor about switching formula and different medicine, call Enfamil hotline, the number is on the can, they'll recommend a formula after u tell them the situation, please before its too late, my son got skin allergies and eczema because of this, 3 years later my baby girl went through it too, she is 15 months now and at 1 week old we noticed it, after taking the same steps we did with my son she now eats everything in sight and she's perfectly fine, let me know how it turns out.

We had the same problem with my son when he was born, I remember when he first threw up everything he had just drank all over his dad, it was like the exorcist. I was absolutley terrified. Our ped put him on Zantac and he wasn't taken off until after his 1st b-day when he was able to drink regular milk. We ended up having him sleep with us until he was 7 months old. He woke up every few hours until then. My son spit up still on the Zantac as well but not as much as he was without it. The best thing is to try to make them as comfortable as you possibly can, don't over feed and make sure he doesn't have any gas bubbles. We got our son the Fisher Price Aquarium music monitors and that helped him to sleep, it was the one where you turn it on and it lights up as a slide on the wall or ceiling. He loves it and still listens to it to this day and he will be 2 in Dec. I hope this may help a lil.

Have you tried Enfamil A.R.?

My son was on Prosobee too, and we still had trouble with him spitting up. The pediatrician prescribed prevacid. We sprinkled it over a spoon full of applesauce. He would take it that way. It was amazing, after 3 or 4 days the spitting up was about 90% better. He does not have to take it anymore. After a certain point we stopped it to see if it was better, and it was. Ask your doctor about it. It really helped us. Good Luck!

All 5 of my babies had reflux, were on zantac as well. They also had milk/soy allergies (not intolerance), as well as egg and wheat allergies. Fortunately, I nursed the first 3 and had just stayed away from all allergens. My two babies I do supplement with formula, and I also have experimented with Alimentum vs Nutramagen. When my first was a baby, I saw an allergy specialist. She told me when starting food, those with allergies and sensitivities should start with orange veggies first rather than rice. Maybe the rice is upsetting his tummy, too. He is still only 6 months, and as much as we all would love our babies to be perfect and sleep through the night, maybe he just can't yet. Wouldn't it be nice if they each came with their own instruction manual! Hang in there, it really will get better.

My 7 month old has had GERD real bad her whole life. She was on Zantac and Reglan until a couple months ago when the doctor switched her from Zantac to Axid. He said it tastes better and has fewer side effects than Zantac. (I didn't notice any side effects from Zantac). I thinks the new medicine works the same. They kept her on the Reglan though.
Has your doctor talked about Reglan?
You see, Zantac only controls the acidity level of the stomach contents. It doesn't actually control the spitting; it just makes it hurt a little less coming up.
Reglan, on the other hand, helps control the sphincter muscle at the top of the stomach so he spits less.
If the Zantac alone helped before but isn't helping now, maybe you just need a dosage increase.
In the earlier months, my little one outgrew her dose every couple of months. Now, the reflux is starting to get better and we're starting to ween her off the meds by not increasing her dose. In her case, I think solid foods and her learning to sit up alone was what helped her.
Hope that helps a little.

Give it time and have faith that this IS something he will grow out of... it will just take a bit of time! One thing i can't stress enough, is to keep your doctor informed of how things are going, especially in ragards to the reflux. The perfect time for a chat like that is during his 6 month check-up, if you haven't already had it done.

I can really relate to your situation though... my daughter was diagnosed at a few days old as having severe reflux. (Her airway would close up when the reflux occured.... it took a spinal tap, various blood tests and a CT scan of her chest to finally find the problem though!) She's been on Zantac and Reglan ever since, along with sleeping at an angle. My little girl is just shy of 6 months old and i noticed her spitting up more often and in more volume so i talked to my doctor. It was decided to up her Zantac dosage from .33 to .4... it's not much but it's made a difference! If you haven't already done so, ask your doctor if increasing the dosage your son gets is an option... or maybe he needs a different medication all together? (What works for one person doesn't always work for someone else, you know?) Have you tried to introduce an actual (cereal) solid food feeding yet? Solid foods are supposed to help and from what i've seen with my daughter, when we can get her to take a bit of the cereal (even though it's still pretty runny) it does seem to help with the reflux for a few hours.

Best of luck!

C.-
My 3 year old daughter had some serious puking issues (literally would project it 3 ft across the room) when she was an infant. I tried EVER formula there was...tried Nutramagen (very expensive)but that didn't even work. I finally tried Similac Alimentum and it was the BEST. Never had another problem formula wise.
Hope this helps.

C.,

My 7 1/2 month old had it really bad after she got out of the hospital. The doctors told me so many times that it was because she had 2 surgeries and it was just from all the anesthetics that she had to have. Well finally I just said is there anything like prevaicid or zantac we can try? So her new pediatrician saiid to try Prevacid. Emily was on prevacid for about 2 months and I finally weaned her off of it because I didn't want her to have to be on it too much or for a long time. She hasn't had a problem since and she has been off of it for almost 4 weeks now.

Hope this helps any!! Good luck and enjoy that Bundle of Joy!!!

B.

I had problems with my son having reflux as well. The doctors that I saw in KY put him on Zantac for it. I also had to change his formula to Soy. He was on GoodStart. At about 7 or 8 months it decreased and finally went away. That is very time consuming. There really doesn't seem to be much you can do other than try to feed him with a spoon the rice with not as much milk. Make it somewhat thick but thin enough he will not have a problem swallow it. That is what I did and it helped until he got to the point he stopped. Tanner also was good when we fed him other food too. He was eating jar food at 4 months. How does he poop?

Hello C.,
My son now 5 and my daughter now 1 both had the same problems and they too were put on liquid zantac. But after awhile It seemed to me that they spit up just the same. I asked my doctor what could be causing them this discomfort and he jut assured me that the flap that separates the esophagus from the trachea sometimes takes a while to fully mature (grow to properly cover the opening). Anyways I hope I don't sound too confusing, but both of my children grew out of it. I will admit that I chose to take them off the zantac as I felt it truly didn't make any difference for them. I know this wasn't advice but I understand what you are going through. It truly can be a frustrating time. Y.

I so feel for you!! My 2nd daughter had this so bad and I really feel like we missed out on the first 5 months of her life trying to deal with it and find a solution. She was miserable and it was almost impossible to comfort her at times. Very stressful!
She also had an intolerance to most forulas at the same time, so it was a matter of finding the right combination. We tried soy, and Nutramagene and others. It was trial and error. We also tried Prilosec meds, but in the end we ended up with Zantac and Similac Alimentum. Her Ped said it had to be the liquid formula though, because the liquid Alimntum is the only formula made without corn in it. Even the powder Alimentum had corn. When we finally found the right combo, we noticed a definate change within a day and a half or so. That fast. She was a new baby!! When she started smiling and being happy for the first time really, at about 5 months, I cried because it was amazing! She was so unhappy and in pain for so long.
Another thing that Ped recommended is giving her a little bit of Mylanta (you would have to check with Ped to get exact dosage--they dont' make a children's formula, my daughter is 10 months and they said 1/2 tsp when needed. This helps soothe right away to feel better instantly. Everything I read when we were going through it is that about 6-7 months when they start holding their heads up and moving more, it gets better for most babies because they can tighten those muscles keeping the reflux down.
It was so hard and I felt so hopeless. I recommend researching it and talking to the ped. It will get better.
Good Luck.