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Babies: 3 - 6 Months
hmsnbl103
member
Oatmeal cereal in breastmilk
hmsnbl103
member
Alright, so my DD has had reflux since early on and we have tried Zantac with mom success and we are now on Prevacid 2 ml two times a day. We have been doing this for a month and a half and my poor girl is super constipated and spends half her days and nights grunting and miserable. I am desperate to get her off the med and have heard about adding oatmeal cereal to her bottle. I called her drs office and they said to try it. Until now, I have been ebf except the two days a week I work. Has anyone else done this for their little ones? I'm curious about whether or not I need to start exclusively pumping so I can add oatmeal to every feed and also, how much oatmeal you guys put in the bottles. She currently takes about 5 oz every 3-4 hrs. TIA!
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Re: Oatmeal cereal in breastmilk
The American Pediatric Association recommends exclusively breastfeeding, or using formula, for the first 6 months and waiting until 6 months to introduce solids but if introducing oatmeal is the way you want to go given your daughter's reflux, I think spoon feeding her the oatmeal would be less risky than putting it in her bottle.
You've probably done this already, but having her sleep on an incline and keeping her upright for at least 20-30 minutes after each feed is also supposed to help a lot. Good luck!
Spoon feeding the oatmeal wont help. The idea is the thicken the milk - it's not about her eating more. Many dr's reccomend putting cereal in the baby's bottle to thicken the milk for reflux.
OP: I don't know how much to put since I have never had to do it... but just make sure you get new nipples that can accomodate the thicker milk. I also would not do every bottle. I would start out with just the morning and evening bottle and see how that works before moving on to the others.
I'll repeat what the pp said. She doesn't NEED to eat solids. She NEEDS her milk to be thicker so that it stays down better to alleviate her reflux symptoms.
As for your question OP, I'd start with one bottle a day to see if it actually does help because switching to EPing can affect your supply and there's a chance that it might not even work/help that much. Good luck.
My son gets one teaspoon of rice cereal for every ounce of milk in his bottle. When we started the process, he was on 5 ounces of milk. I initially put in 2 teaspoons with the 5 ounces of breast milk to see how his belly would handle it because I have heard it can cause constipation. We haven't have any constipation issues and are now up to 4 teaspoons of the rice cereal with 5 oz of milk. It has actually helped quite a bit. You may want to buy a faster flow nipple though because the milk is thicker. I would only change the nipple if your baby gets frustrated with the slower flow nipple. If your baby is guzzling the milk, they are more likely to throw up as well. I know this is a frustrating process and my son still has trouble. I do think the rice cereal helped and also burping him every ounce even though he screams as if we aren't going to give him the rest of his bottle haha
We had the same issue. We take Zantac twice a day. At 3 months old, the doctor had me add 1 tsp. of oatmeal per ounce of formula. It has definitely helped. She gets oatmeal in every bottle.
We did have an issue with the nipples. The Y nipples let the fomula flow too fast for her. So, I am using a level 3 nipple. I use an immersion blender to chop it up a little so it goes through the nipple better.
Hope this helps. Good luck!