if your baby has silent reflux, please come in...

peapine

the doctor diagnosed our little one with silent reflux today. its pretty mild, so this is his best guess. he would like us to start putting 3 teaspoons of rice cereal in her bottle twice a day. if that works, no medication needed, otherwise we move on to zantac.

she is fussy on the bottle, often cries, arches back. doesnt cry at all in between or after feedings. only while eating. she has hiccups a lot, but doesnt seem to bother her. she has very little spitting up. in fact, i have only seen her spit up a handful of times total. oh and most of all, she is not eating well. she was up to 5 ounces a feed, and now sometimes she refuses to eat at all and sometimes only 2-3 ounces. this is after a 3-4 our stretch.

one other note of importance here- the girl HARDLY EVER SLEEPS during the day!! since she was 3 weeks old, her naps sucks. she wants to sleep, but the problem is, she goes down SO EASY. i can put her wide awake and she falls asleep no problem. however, she wakes up at the 30-45 min mark. looks around, tries to drift back to sleep and has a very hard time transitioning into the next sleep cycle. i can most of the time help her out. but i am very busy with a toddler and often times not around her right that second - and then she misses her window and sits there wide awake. she wont cry. sometimes fusses because she is tired and cant sleep. what the heck to do with her for another 1.5 hours??? she just sits there. then when its time to eat, she finally falls asleep. i try to feed her but she is so overtired. so, i think that is also playing into the whole "crying on the bottle"

I just dont know what to do. dont talk to me about swaddling, paci/no paci, quite room, etc. i have tried it all. she also is just going to have to get used to our toddler. we have a townhome. the only thing i have NOT tried is a white noise machine. but anyway, any advice is appreciated on any or all of the above.

 

NSL

My first napped like that (and also had reflux, though his never caused him pain so we didn't medicate it) and I'm sorry to say that he just had to grow out of it.  He started napping well at around a year, and naps for up to three hours at a stretch at 3, though.

stressshan

My first had silent reflux.  She ended up on meds at 6 months.  The one thing that helped the most for her was raising the head of her bed.  We took phone books and put them under the front legs.  This helped keep the food in her belly and she slept better.  She would fall asleep easily as well but then would wake up within 30 minutes of being laid down.  Once we raised the bed she could sleep much longer. 

aribs2010

My LO has a similar sleep cycle during the day.  She was on Zantac and then Prevacid.  They both helped but they both gave her very loose stools (very smelly too) so I stopped medicating her.  She will sleep during the day on me, so I try to take a nap with her if I can. I elevated her mattress by placing a pillow under one end, but it doesn't seem to make a difference.  She sleeps great at night now so it is weird that she is like this during the day.

I know it is frustrating but the best advice I can give you is to accept that your LO is a cat napper and roll with it.  MY LO only stays up for about an hour then goes to sleep for 30-45 minutes then repeats this through out the day.  I think our LOs will out grow it.