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Babies: 0 - 3 Months
PSA: Article about overprescribing babies reflux meds
I was reading this on Slate and I thought this might be of use to you:
https://www.slate.com/id/2257038/pagenum/all/#p2
I'm posting this so you can be aware of the situation and ask your pedi lots of questions if your baby has reflux.
Have a great day. 
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Re: PSA: Article about overprescribing babies reflux meds
I'm shocked by how many people on here say their docs don't even run any tests....they just assume its reflux.
Just curious, what sort of tests does your pedi run? We finally got a swallow study done with DD when she was about eight weeks because she ended up in the hospital. We took her to a GI dr. after that he didn't even run any tests on her.
Children Photography Photo Credit: Heather Barta Photography
Kind of scary to just assume it's one thing. Wow. DD was tested, we tried different things and when her pedi added up everything that;s how we came to reflux. She is doing so much better.
we did the swallow. we also did an u/s to rule out a few other things.
1ht
I am not loosing any sleep over medicating my child with zantac so that he no longer chokes on his own spit up regardless of who may receive financial benefit.
Obviously it's important for the doctors to perform appropriate diagnostic exams to ensure that reflux indeed is the issue. I would like to see more scientific data as opposed to conjecture on how AR drugs help and or hurt child development
Haven't read the article yet, but my pedi first recommended keeping DD2 upright for 15-30 minutes after feedings, nursing her on one side several times in a row to make sure she wasn't just getting foremilk, and cutting dairy out of my diet before she would prescribe meds for reflux.
Luckily, doing just the first two for awhile was enough to resolve DD2's reflux issues. I'm glad my pedi takes that approach.
DD1, 1/5/2008 ~~~ DD2, 3/17/2010
I agree to the extent that a stool sample should at least be done to rule out food allergies (which often are the cause of reflux) and other non-med solutions tried first- upright feedings, diet (for bf mom) or formula (for ff baby) should be examined first, etc. But other tests are not conclusive at all and I can see why they aren't run if the baby is showing obvious signs of reflux (choking back reflux, cough, screaming and gulping etc). The swallow test only shows reflux if the baby happens to reflux during the short time the test is run. Our GIS warned us that a majority of babies will not show reflux during the test and a large percentage of those will have reflux, just not show it at that moment. DS1 didn't reflux during the test, but he did right after the test, very frustrating. We don't plan to do the test with DS2, he has obvious silent reflux, I have eliminated dairy and soy and once we know food allergies are under control we will try eliminating caffeine and tomatoes, etc and try meds as a last resort.
I'm not saying they have to do EVERY test (or even the ones we did). However, there are some docs (according to posters on here ) who give meds automatically if the baby is showing the symptoms without even looking into it at all.