Weaning a reflux baby - any tips?

[sobersadie]

My daughter is 3 months old (no im not planning on weaning her yet!!) and suffers from quite bad reflux (on gaviscon and Omaprezole). She is getting better but still doesnt take an awful lot of milk a day (enough that she is growing though). im just wondering if anyone has any tips on weaning her when the time comes. does it help the reflux or not make any difference? Also if she is fussy with her milk do you think she will be fussy with her food too?

 

[Sarah+]

Max is on Losec for quite bad reflux. We've just started to wean. I keep getting told that solids will help with his reflux (I guess the theory is it's harder to throw-up food than milk). Max also doesn't take a lot of milk during the day, but is also growing fine. We're only in the early days, quite small amount of food, but my observation is that food seems to come up just as easily, lol. Don't really have any advice sorry, but didn't want to read and run. Good luck

 

[WannaB]

My first daughter had quite bad reflux too, I found putting her on food early did settle it alot quicker and she wasnt fussy with her food, I could feed her pretty much any wierd and wonderful vegetable and she ate it. She was breast fed and weaned herself at about 18 months so Im of no use to you there sorry!

 

[premmiemum123]

Am weaning my LO who had severe reflux and was on 3 medicines as she kept holding her breath and turning blue. Now we are weaning her reflux is so much better, I can now put her on her back after 10 minutes, we don't have to drain her like we used to. She is on 2 meals and 4 bottles a day now.
She still has vomits however they appear to be just normal vomits as opposed to projectile vomits.

Good luck with the weaning when you do start...

 

[Tabs]

My only advice is to wean very carefully and don't rush into new foods too quickly.

Morgan's suffered with GORD since birth and we started to wean her at about 5.5 months. She also was never a big drinker of milk but has always loved water. We took things very slowly and stayed on baby rice and porridge for some time, but we actually found that weaning made her symptoms go into overdrive?!?!?! Which is bizarre as early weaning is usually recommended!?!

Now at 18 months, and several different medications and horrible tests later, she is now on an adult dose of Omeprazole and her symptoms STILL aren't fully controlled.

Follow your baby's lead, and if at any time you feel things aren't improving, go straight back to the Paediatrician and tell them!!! And don't let them fob you off!!!

 

[Cinderella]

We started weaning around 3mo2wks. Max is also on Gaviscon and omeprazole and was recently diagnosed with GORD. He did start to lose weight at one point as his milk intake was less than 15oz in a 24hr period so early weaning helped us a lot!

The early weaning will only help with the vomiting as opposed to the acid reflux, and certainly the foods you give to the baby can aggravate the acid reflux so there are a few things to consider.

I started giving Max just a few spoons of plain porridge after 3 of his feeds every day. The vomiting got better almost immediately. The projectile vomiting stopped and he just spit up occasionally instead of the ridiculous amounts before. I make the porridge with his milk so it's nutrional for him, and make it thick, so it does stay down.

He seems to be constantly hungry at the moment so i've upped his food feeds as he can't tolerate a bigger milk feed than 4oz. He now has the flavoured porridges 3 times a day, in a larger portion, and half a jar of food thickened with porridge. He loves his porridges and gets excited when he sees the spoon so I definitely don't think the food irritates him, as he still has quite a bad aversion to the bottle now.

The porridges worked for a good 3 weeks for us and it's only now we've put him onto different flavours, he seems to be doing well with the jars and likes the flavours but I steer clear from anything that might be acidic, like apples, pears and berries. I also find the consistency of the jars too runny, so have to thicken them, otherwise he does just throw them up and it's a lot messier than the milk!

The key is definitely just trying things slowly, I stayed away from baby rice as it did nothing for Max and found the porridges a good place to start. I was very wary of early weaning and didn't want to bombard him too soon but I have to admit that it's made everyone's life better in this household!

 

[adzuki]

My pediatrician actually had us giving Miss M rice in her bottle before bed to help with her reflux from about 2 months of age - she kept choking on her spit up in her sleep and it helped her keep more of her food down when she was flat. Now I giver her solids twice a day, and I have noticed a BIG difference in her daytime spit up - she almost NEVER spits up after a meal with solids.

Hope it helps your LO when the time comes!

 

[Wobbles]

Caitlin had reflux she was always sick and tbh we just went about weaning exactly the same way as you would without reflux what the HV said to us was she would stop sicking up the more she was on her feet (starting to walk)! Just have a couple of extra pampers packs for cleaning up haha

She was not a milk fan either and at one I tried her with full fat milk and she just wouldn't have it but loved her cereals and yoggys.