give me hope ladies
If your baby was treated for reflux, tell me, when did it get better?
Update from GI doctor today:I took Andrew to his GI doctor today for a follow-up to the swallow study (yes, that was in December, by the way.)
Andrew
is still uber fussy - she checked his ears while we were there and said
they are still red. He's been on amoxicillin for 4 1/2 days so she said
they shouldn't still hurt and that he's not responding. (Is this
common?) She called in a new antibiotic (I forget what it's
called...Z.....
).
Coincidentally (or maybe not) Andrew's fussiness started about 1.5 weeks ago. About 2+ weeks ago we stopped his eryped (we weaned over the course of about a month), which he's taken for about 6+ months for suspected (no test confirming, but prescribed based on symptoms) delayed gastric emptying.
We were hoping to go off the eryped because I don't like the idea of him being on long term antibiotics (worried he would become sort of desensitized to them) and he doesn't spit up anymore. The doctor agreed it was worth trying.
So now we're not sure if maybe going off of the eryped has made his reflux worse (because his stomach isn't emptying properly) thus resulting in the ear infection.
Or, it could be one huge coincidence.
The current course of action is to get this ear infection cleared up and see if he is still fussy and very difficult to feed. Then we'll have to decide whether we need to go back on the eryped.
I also
asked about his swallow study and thoughts about if his reflux appeared
to be making ANY improvement (vs. the previous 2 performed - one in
Sept09 and one in Apr09) and she said no It's still high level.
I'm
bummed because I always heard that it's usually somewhat better at 6
months and usually not an issue after a year. Of course there are kids
who have problems longer, I was just hoping that Andrew wasn't one of
them since I've heard most don't.
Anyway, no real point to this. I'm frustrated and totally burnt out. Andrew is pissed a lot of the time. 
He's
always burpy, has the hiccups after ever meal, is arching his back and
screaming during bottles unless I rock him in his room and count to
distract him.
Oh, and he's teething. She said she could feel one but it wasn't quite ready to break through.
Teething + reflux + ear infection = FAIL.
The good news: he's gaining weight and is 18 lb 6 oz (no idea how that fits on the curve, but, I know it's more than he was last time we were at the doctor)
Re: give me hope ladies
I'm sorry!! I have nothing to offer, but I will say a prayer for Andrew (and you!) right now!! I hope it is just a coincidence that these are all occuring after he's off the eriped.
(HUGS!!!)
Well, I do not know what to say to help you, we are battling reflux but she is only 3 months old actual, 1 1/2 months adjusted. But, I did want to say that I am so sorry you are dealing with this and I can understand how frustrating and tiring it can be with dealing with it for so long. I hope for both of your sakes that it really does start to clear up soon and it is just a coincidence.
Awesome on the weight gain though!!!
well, our situation is a bit different since Robbie is G tube fed.
Robbie's reflux got DRAMATICALLY better (went from projective puking 20x/day to spitting up 3x/day) at about 13 months old. He got a cold and bronchiolitis with it. His o2 sats were a little low (lower 90s) and they couldn't get them up, so they sent him to the hospital to be admitted. At that time, they did a chest xray and his right lung looked so junky they thought he had pneumonia. More test indicated that was not the case. They blamed the lung haziness on reflux and microaspiration.
Anyway, he was really sick.. but they patched him up with enough steroids & albuterol he got to come home, but we saw the doc every day for about a week. He had a double ear infection on top of everything else. (I'll come back to that later.)
The doc was pretty worried about his lungs and indicated that we should NOT feed him until he was full because just the pressure of a full tummy on his lungs could drop his sats. So I started slowing his g-tube feeds down drastically. Instead of doing a bolus feed, it would take about 90 minutes to pump a feed in. And he stopped puking. Well, not stopped, but NOTHING like before. No more screaming, no more crying. And then BAM! he gained a TON of weight (got really fat for about 2 months!)
Since then we've slowly, slowly, slowly increased the speed of his drips. Now I can get a bottle feeding in in about 45 minutes w/o screaming crying and puking (most of the time.) And his puking has continued to slow down. These days I'd say he averages about a puke/day, though really, it's more like some days he pukes three times, but then he might not puke for a day or two. He seems to have more trouble with being too full (can't feed him solids too close to time for a bottle feeding) and richness of the milk. I'd love to get him to take 30calorie formula or use carnation breakfast to beef up his cow's milk, but when the stuff gets too rich, he pukes more.
I still see a lot of silent reflux (hiccups, hard burps, swallowing stuff back, some gagging) but it's still vastly better than it was.
Ears- Robbie had the ear infection I mentioned above. It ended up taking 3 round of increasingly strong abx to kick that one. I think he was on amoxycillen, then cefdenil (sp?) and then augmentin. The cefdanil made him REALLY sick (diarrhea REALLY, REALLY bad) and still didn't fix his ears. Fortunately augmentin did it, and didn't make him ill (even though I guess it does make a lot of kids sick) so since then that's what we've used for every ear infection. At that point, he started getting ear infections about ever 2 weeks. When the infection was gone, he'd still have fluid. They just wouldn't dry up. He ended up getting ear tubes in January.. I think he'd had 9 ear infections in 6 months. Maybe more. I honestly lost track.
The ENT did say reflux was a risk factor for the ear issues. Though I don't know if I think that was Robbie's issue. I mean, he had HORRID reflux from birth but didn't get his first ear infection until 13 months old. But I'm sure it didn't help them clear. Either way.. reflux and ear infection both suck and you have my sympathies.
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Cecilia didn't have reflux as bad as your Andrew or some of the previous posters but she was on prevacid well after she turned a year. I think she was almost 15 months or more when we stopped giving it to her. And she just got discharged from the GI doctor a couple months ago.
She has also puked a few times after a particularly spicy, seasoned or tomato-y meal so I know it still continues to bother her.
At least he's gaining. I hope he feels better soon. Ear infections and teething are a big PITA.
Lily is still on reflux meds from discharge from the NICU - they found her reflux during a monitor recording for her Brady's, and found that she stopped breathing bc she was refluxing.
She has steadily gone up on her meds as she has gotten bigger, and is now on Prilosec and Axid. We tried to wean her around 9 months (also around when she started PT and OT)....the therapists actually said her reflux had alot to do with her delays and being so stiff. So, we went back up on meds, which helped tremendously.
She finally had a swallow study in December and they did see irritation, so the plan is to keep her comfortable, on her meds. We go back to the Pediatric GI Dr. in April and will see what the plan is then (Lily will be almost 2 then).