Reflux/Possible Dairy intolerance, formula help.
My DD is almost 2 months old. She has been diagnosed with Gerd. She was on Zantac and it didn't help, so they put her on prevacid along wiht the zantac, then removed her from the zantac and upped her dose of prevacid to twice a day. She has also been switched from Gerber, to Alimentum, to Nutramigen, to Elecare, to Isomil and now back to nutramigen. To get to my question...
It seems like no matter what we do, nothing really controls her reflux. They diagnosed her with it merely by my discription. We even took her to a GI doc who just listened to what I had to say, said she had GERD and sent me on my way. It just seems that nothing is helping her. The doc thinks that maybe she has a dairy intolerance so we recently tried Soy. She was only on it for 2 days. Her vomiting/spitting up actually stopped for the most part, she was burping better but she didn't sleep for 2 whole days and it took me almost a week after that to get her to poop even using suppositories. The doc told me to put her back on nutramigen. Now that we're back on it, we have all the same symptoms. Not sleeping well, having BM's but straining hard to have them, vomiting with every burp and even after feedings, waking up screaming while trying to swallow down the acid coming up her throat. etc.
I just don't know what to do. it seems like they just keep switching her formulas but they don't really know the problem. She hasn't been tested for anything, they just diagnose her based off of what i say. The sad part is, the Elecare formula was the worst formula she was on, along with the Isomil. I just don't know what to do. Does anyone have any experience or suggestions?
Re: Reflux/Possible Dairy intolerance, formula help.
Geez! Sounds like you have your hands full.
Well, in all honesty, all the switching of formula can cause problems all on its own. I'd stick with what she seemed the 'best' on for a few weeks and let things calm down and then re-eval whats going on.
Milk intolerance can be pretty severe, so if thats even a slight chance, I'd still to the hypoallergenics for now, too.
Lurking here to remind myself what to expect. I have a 2 year old who had hideously bad GERD as an infant and actually still spits up occasionally.
I'm not going to lie- nothing helped us but time. We invested in tons of cheap rags and our couch literally needs to be burned. We stacked Prevacid with Zantac and it seemed to help but nothing got rid of it. Like you, we ended up on Alimentum to rule out any food allergies as well. At 8 months I switched him to a sensitive formula and it was fine. At this point, I don't think he ever had a food allergy.
Coping is all you can do, I'm sorry to say. For those with the worst cases of reflux, it's just not going to go away soon. Our Dr.s always said "it'll be gone by 6 months" but it wasn't.
So, here's my advice. Do whatever you can to get her to sleep, which probably means sleeping upright. The sleeping thing was a nightmare for us and our son still sleeps like crap. We were told by a GI specialist that infants develop healthy sleep habits between 4 and 6 months of age, so when they are in pain and don't develop those habits, it becomes much harder to get good sleep habits later. I was told this at 9 months of course. And, do whatever you can to get some sleep yourself. You'll have to accept that your child is suffering and that you can't do much to stop it once you've tried "everything". This is a sucky feeling.
Things WILL get better, it will just take waaaay longer than you're hoping or imagining it could.
I'm sorry you're dealing with this and I swear I'm terrified of having another GERD baby myself. My DH and I half joke that we have PTSD from the whole thing!
Three of my kids were diagnosed with GERD and what helped out for each of the was teh Enfamil AR, this formula is prepped with rice cereal and was made for spitting up. The milk is thick which keeps the milk down. None of the meds ever worked, no toher formula helped either.
The enfamil a/r also gets thicker when it reaches their tummy so it really stays down.
DD1 had severe colic and silent reflux as well as intolerance for milk protein in cows milk..so she was on zantac and after trying several formulas we ended up on Nutrimagen. Things got better slowly. By 3 mos she was much better but in no way 'cured'. Here we are with DD2 and she is the exacrt same case...Our pedi tried one formula and then after 7-10 days we switched her to Nutrimagen also. It took a good 7-10 days to notice a difference...the pedi tested her stools for blood which indicated that she had intolerance to milk protein. She is doing much better. The zantac was the same way, pedi told me to wait 7-10 days to see a difference and it has worked. If you can, try to give things several days to work and then if after 7-10 days try something else. From your post it sounds like your pedi is changing things very quickly. It is difficult and it was so frustrating have a baby be so uncomfortable and unable to sleep. We have used the carseat for both of our girls for sleeping-it was the only thing that worked with DD1-keeping her upright and we didn't have her sleeping in the crib til she was a couple of months old b/c her reflux was so bad. Hang inthere..it wil get better but it does take a lot of time and patience.