BTDT moms who BF with an infant with bad reflux...

DD#1 had bad reflux but we never did the cereal in the bottle so I'm not familiar with this treatment. DD#2 just turned a month old yesterday - and I don't think the zantac is working well - she is spitting up a lot at a time, she even spit up yellow today, her hiccups are getting worse again as well as the obvious crying drags. My ped suggested I pump for every feeding and put rice into her bottle - I haven't pumped for DD yet and am worried about pumping for every feeding since I have a 24 month old who is very active.

So those who have been thru this - did you pump for every feeding? or only those mornings and nights when you DC spit up more often? He told me to open the hole in her bottle with a pin - is that what others have done or are there special nipples? Which bottles are best for adding milk - I used Dr Browns with DD - I have adrini and dr brown's bottles that I haven't opened yet.

Any other suggestions...

Re: BTDT moms who BF with an infant with bad reflux...

First off I know how stressful it is to have a baby with reflux.

I think you need to see a GI specialist for the reflux, peds don't have enough of a knowledge base to treat infants with reflux.

According to the specialist we see at Yale Zantac is a horrible and not really effective medicine for reflux, he has know idea why so many peds recommend it as a first line treatment for reflux.

Alexa is on Prevacid and it works wonders, Zantac NEVER worked for her.

Secondly, From all th research I did on adding cereal to the bottle something VERY interesting I learned on why this method is NOT EFFECTIVE and particularly more so when added to breast milk because the enzymes in breast milk that are used to aid in digestion immediately start breaking the cereal down so by the time it even gets to the stomach its pretty much dissolved.

You can see this for yourself by making a bowl of rice cereal with breast milk and over the course of a few minutes it gradually becomes thinner and thinner.

Also, I'm not a big fan of the idea of putting cereal which is more complex to digest into the belly of a young baby
that already has GI issues.

This rice in teh bottle theory is pretty old and outdated, a lot of GI specialists stray away from it and hopefully peds will catch on soon as well!

Re: BTDT moms who BF with an infant with bad reflux...

I don't have any advice on cereal b/c we didn't do it but wanted to give you b/c it was SO hard going through that with DS.

Our ped also said the same thing about cereal as the previous poster said - that it wouldn't help and could only hurt so we never did it. We tried zantac when DS was older and it made him so much worse so we quickly stopped that.

Hope you find the answers and this resolves itself quickly

ETA: I did pump only for 10 days when DS was two wks old. It was really hard. It was double the work - actually triple b/c i had to pump, feed DS AND wash all the pump parts and bottles.It nearly drove me crazy - so i would say if you could limit this it would probably be best!

Message edited 6/24/2009 5:48:23 PM.