Rice cereal as a thickener?
So, my babies are spitup-ers. Both of them. They never were in the hospital, but since they've been home it's been a free-for-all. They are "happy spitters" though, which our pediatrition said is a sign that it's probably not reflux, and he thinks it might be from switching from breastmilk + 24 cal fortifier to just plain breastmilk an the change in consistancies.
But then we went for our 3rd checkup (becuase I love my pediatrition but he wants to see us once a week for a whole month after the babies came home because it's not like I don't have a billion other appointments) and Audrey had only gained 3 ounces in 10 days. Which is not enough - he wants them to gain at least half an ounce a day. And he thinks it's because she's spitting up so much.
So to combat the spitup, he told us to start putting 1tsp of rice cereal in her bottles (which are 80ml). We just started last night and it seems to be making a little bit of a difference! But ya know, I trust my pedi buuuuut I worry about this (um, and everything), isn't it bad to start them on rice cereal so early?? I mean, it really just makes my breastmilk the consistancy of whole milk, so its not like it's SOLID solids, ya know?
Has anyone else done this? Thoughts on it? Tell me to calm the eff down and trust my doctor?
Re: Rice cereal as a thickener?
I know it seems early, but they use rice cereal to combat a lot of issues these days. If your ped says it's ok, I'd trust him.
We started rice cereal a little earlier then usual on DS too because he was constantly hungry...
LO has pretty bad reflux so our pedi suggested adding 1/2 tsp rice cereal for every ounce of formula (he is taking 3 oz per feeding). Overall it has been helping a little bit. He still spits up but a little less and its thicker. If you end up doing this you may have to use a different nipple for the bottle. We use the Y cut for thicker liquids (Dr Browns). Btw my LO is 12 weeks actual and 3 weeks adjusted and he has been using the cereal for over 3 weeks now.
Good luck!
This is very similiar to how we started thickening my son's feeds. First we started with rice at 1/2 tablespoon per 30mls and now he's strictly getting oatmeal - same ratio. It helps. I know it seems early but it won't hurt them.
We tried the Y nibbles for Dr. Browns but my son couldn't handle that much flow so I expand the Level 1 nipples using a fork prong - this part will probably take some experimenting so I recommend buying a few different nipple flow levels to figure out what works for you LOs.
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