Adding Rice/Oatmeal Cereal to formula

GirlyGirl319

We just went to the pedi today and our LO is upto 8lb 5oz!! He has shown syptoms of reflux so the pedi gave us a script for Zantac that we just started today.  He also told me to get rice/oatmeal/barley cereal to add into his formula to help thicken it so that he will hold it down more.  We were having a big issue with him spitting up after feedings as well as 2 hours after.

I have read about adding cereal prior to getting my pedi's approval but I wanted to hear if this worked for other people?

 

 

adrielegorburu

Weve been adding rice cereal to DDs bottles since the NICU for her reflux.  It makes a difference in the spit up - I would say she spits up 30-50% less with rice cereal.  It also fills her up more I think - she is definitely a chunky monkey! We had 1/2 teaspoon to each ounce of formula or milk.  We were told to use rice - not oatmeal - we also fed rice cereal on a spoon when we started solids last week.

adrielegorburu

PS - the cereal may constipate the baby a bit FYI

cottonlily84

I haven't even talked to the ped about it yet but we started adding some rice cereal to bottles yesterday.  DD will eat anything (e.g. prune juice!) so we weren't worried about her accepting it.  I'm only doing it to thicken her milk a tad so we aren't giving it as cereal or with a spoon yet.  I've mixed 1/2 tbsp (the directions say 1 tbsp) of cereal to 2.5 oz (5 tbsp) of breast milk twice a day.  She doesn't seem to notice anything different while she's eating.  Still trying to figure the nipples out.  Slow flow won't work of course, the medium flow last night seemed to stick but the medium flow this morning about drowned her.  I got some y-cut nipples for cereal bottles I'm going to try today.  DD was on Zantac drops first and now has Prevacid pills.  The reflux (with nothing coming up) is much better but the spit up is still massive.  She's had a hard time gaining weight and I hope the cereal at least helps with that. 

americana

Our girls had reflux as well. We added the rice cereal at 1 month old and they also took Pepcid. The Pepcid was a miracle in helping with the colic. They took rice cereal in their formula until about 6 months old when they "outgrew" the reflux. Good luck!

americana

Oh and ditto on this. You might have to play around with different nipples. Especially when baby starts taking more formula and therefore more cereal. They always say "don't widen nipples" on the packaging but unfortunately we had to do it, even with the y-cut cereal nipples - the cereal just globs up in there. (Just be vigilant if you go that route. And if you're not comfortable doing it, don't.) Shake bottles often during the feeding to loosen up the clumps (cover the nipple so you don't get covered in formula though hahaha).

cottonlily84

The Y-cut nipples didn't work either. So with the cereal bottles we're having to use our old standard bottles with standard flow nipples.  Which is kinda aggrivating because I just bought a bunch of drop in nursers and had her used to those.  I know she's getting annoyed with all the nipple flow changes. She never knows how hard she has to work to get it out right.