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Preemies
Help! Does this sound like reflux to you???
Ok, I am at my wits end with this & need some help:
probably at least once a day, I will be in the middle of a bottle feeding with Stella & she will just start choking really bad to the point of turning blue & requiring some heavy back patting to revive her. Usually she pukes up a decent amount after she's done gagging/choking. The whole ordeal is so exhausting for her & makes me feel horrible.
& then a few times a day maybe 15 minutes either before or after a feeding I will look at her & she will just be gagging & turning blue. I sit her up & pat her on the back & again, she usually pukes up a decent amount & then she's all better.
No, it's not horrible & doesn't happen at every feeding (sometimes doesn't even happen every day), but it's becoming very disheartening. I feel like DH & I are the only ones qualified enough to give her a bottle because it's like we're saving her life on a daily basis.
I hate to give her more medicine every day (she's already on daily pulmacort & albuterol nebulizer treatments as well as the nasty poly visol), but I don't want her to aspirate on the vomit & I also want to be able to trust that she is going to be OK when the one fine day comes that she gets off of her apnea monitor (which, by the way, never alarms... Except tonight--she had her first brady during a bad choking fit during her feeding & that's with a 20 second delay on the alarm--it was BAD).
So does this sound like reflux to you? I am going to call her pedi tomorrow--hopefully they will just put her on the medicine to try it out. I would rather not have to do a barium swallow/PH probe with her. 
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Re: Help! Does this sound like reflux to you???
It could be reflux. DS was diagnosed with reflux in the NICU. He came home on an apnea monitor, which didn't go off for 3 weeks after they figured out the right combo of meds. He was on Prevacid and Reglan, which really did help his reflux. However, after about 2 months, the pharmacist asked me when I was planning on taking him off the Reglan. I was like "what do you mean?" She said there were side effects if he was on the Reglan too long. We did not know about any side effects. So we began weening DS off the Reglan at 4 months, then weened off the Prevacid. We hated the idea of DS being on medication. We thickened his formula with rice cereal instead, to help keep his feeds down. It seemed to work just as well as any medication.
I'm glad we did the meds to aleviate his pain immediately, but glad we did the weening too. Good luck!
Our son has horrible reflux (on Prilosec)..but...he also recently had a swallow study because he was doing something similar to what you're describing. The swallow study revealed that he had a slightly delayed swallow and "deep penetration" occurred (where the milk is near the airway but he doesn't actually aspirate) which is when he would choke and cry in the middle of his feed.
The point is - if you don't have one, I would get into a pediatric GI as soon as you can. I would start on reflux meds to see if that helps. The swallow study isn't a big deal at all to do, if she's having this kind of trouble it's worth it (if the doctor agrees based on symptoms).
The pH test and endoscopies are a much bigger deal - we haven't done the pH and just recently did the endoscopy.
could be, or could even be a swallowing issue. I think it's at least worth exploring. You could talk to the doc, they can do an upper GI and see what they see.. but it's probably worth looking into some meds for the reflux. Untreated, it can lead to esophogeal erosion, food aversion and a ton of other issues.
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