Formula Feeding

Need advice

About a month ago I took DD into her pedi because she started refusing her bottle. I was lucky if I could get her to drink 2 oz. She was frequently spitting up, even to the point of it coming out her nose. I could tell she was uncomfortable. I EFF and she was on similac advance at the time. Her pedi thought it was reflux so she put her on zantac. Almost a month later she is still very fussy (inconsolable screaming at times), still fighting her bottles, still spitting up a lot, still very gassy, and her poop is green watery and very odorous. I ended up calling her pedi a few days ago and she thought to try similac soy formula. My husband is lactose intolerant and so is most of his family. DD has been on soy formula for several days now and the only difference I've noticed is that she's not screaming anymore. She is drinking a little bit more but still fights the bottle after 2 oz like she's in pain. Has anyone else had similar issues? What have you all tried?

Re: Need advice

  • Thanks for the input! I will definitely look into a soy intolerance as well.
  • I had the same problem with my daughter and I tried the Similac Total comfort and it works so well for my daughter. It also can take three days fr the old formula to leave there system. 



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  • It can take about a week for her tummy to totally recover if she has a problem with milk. It sounds like she also may be anticipating feeling bad, so some could be mental. The no more screaming is a definite improvement though! Also, how old is she? My daughter rarely took more than 2-3 oz at a time until she was about 8 weeks old. 3 oz was a big bottle for her. She started out 6 lbs, 3 oz, and gained weight really well on that little of formula.
  • My DD is 9 weeks old. At 5 weeks she was downing 4 oz with no problem. Then she started to spit up a ton around 6 weeks and cry while doing it. Pedi said it was reflux and put her on Zantac. Nothing has really helped since, she still only takes 2-3 oz each feeding and will cry on the bottle after she burps. I can tell she's still hungry because she will start sucking again but then cries and unlatches and then tries again she has been on the soy formula for 5 days and I have not seen any improvement other than being extremely fussy at random times during the day.
  • Sucking may not mean she's still hungry. She may just want to suck. And with reflux, you want to encourage that so her little sphincter muscles get stronger. Can you offer a pacifier and see if that soothes her? Also, Zantac won't make her spit up any less, it just makes the spitup less acidic. Good luck, Mama. I know this is phenomenally stressful. If you don't think the soy is working ask about the non-soy, non-milk formulas. That may do the trick.
  • DS used to do this scream eating thing, where he would want to eat but then would scream because his tummy hurt. We ended up switching to soy....and it took a few days, but it worked well for us. He's currently three now and still has dairy issues (as does DH).  One issue we had with the soy though was that it caused a great deal of constipation....which got better as soon as he started eating solid food....but that was a rough few months. 
  • I agree with the needing to suck. We went through the same with our LO. He kept feeding needing to suck but then was over feeding and it was making him sick. Well, one of his many issues. We started out feeding smaller amounts and soothing in between with pacifier and skin-to-skin. He was exclusively breastfed then but with expressed bottles we figured out no more than 2.5 oz in two hrs and that was around12 weeks old.

    He's currently 3 months, and gets 3-4 oz of formula at most every 3-4 hrs. My two-cents on type of formula. He wasn't having actual allergy symptoms so we knew it wasn't that and you might try reading up on allergy versus sensitivity and see which symptoms fit your LO more. My LO's turned out to be protein sensitivity and rare as it is he can't even tolerate breastmilk. This means he gets formula that has partially hydrolyzed proteins (Similac total comfort, Enfamil Gentelease, Gerber good starts gentle to name a couple of many). Within about 24-hrs we noticed a major difference from breastmilk and other formulas (even regular soy) and longer to see better results as he healed.

    Issues he had were painful gas, excessive spit up, projectile vomiting, watery (sometimes foamy) frequent stools (diarrhea), screaming and drawing up. There are several possible causes and the best advice that I can really give is just to keep working with the doctor to try to rule things out, slow and frustrating as it is when your little one is suffering. You can always try to just call and talk to your doctor over the phone rather than always waiting for appointments. Our doctor has always been great at encouraging that and has even talked to me a couple times late in the evening with the LO screaming in the background.
  • Have you tried a different type of bottle? For my best friend she ended up switching brands which alleviated some of the spit up/fussy eating periods.
  • This may be completely left field, but we went through something similar with DD when she was around 8 weeks old. We thought she had reflux because she would eat 2-3oz and then scream, when she was normally eating 4-5oz. It ended up being that she was getting so tired before her naps that she was reacting like that. It lasted a couple weeks and then it's like she miraculously got over it. I hope you get it figured out. It was very frustrating and worrisome for us.
  • We had aome of these issues when my 11 week old daughter was super tiny. We used dr brown's bottles with advanced at first and then enfamil gentlease and everything caused AWFUL issues and crying. I asked her pedi and he said nipple size on the bottle is a huge factor. Dr browns can actually encourage issues because the nipples are so small. I switched to playtex ventaire and similac sensitive and no issues! Def try different bottles, your bb could be getting tons of air because they dont have a good enclosed suction on their bottle.

    So sorry you're going through this. I hope you find something that helps.
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