Introduce Cereal?

Hi,

I found this in Laura’s intro. Scroll down a little to find the part about thickening breast milk.

http://www.kellymom.com/babyconcerns/reflux.html

I personally don’t think it helps UNLESS the baby cannot keep anything down without thickening. Or, if the baby chokes so badly on thin feeds that he has to have it thickened in order to get it down without choking. Does your son choke or aspirate during feedings? Does he have any respiratory symptoms? If not, thickening probably is not necessary.

Also, a very bad down side to thickening breast milk is that your poor wife will have to pump all day long to keep her milk supply up and then feed the EBM. I did the pump and feed thing (not because I needed to thicken but because for a variety of reasons my children could not or would not nurse). Pumping does not stimulate milk production as well as an actual baby nursing, so a woman has to pump almost constantly in order to keep her supply up. This pumping, feeding and taking care of baby all day long can be exhausting to say the least.

Another factor to consider is that very young babies’ systems usually are not mature enough to digest grains and you end up with additional problems and more digestive discomforts in the baby. The allergy issue is also a concern. I’ve heard this too, that introducing grains too early can cause allergies later on.

So, if he’s nursing well, not choking or aspirating, and keeping enough of his feedings down to grow and gain weight normally, then in my opinion it would be much better to just get his meds right to make him more comfortable, and to continue nursing him.

Have you checked to see that his prevacid dose is adequate? Many doctors under dose our babies because they are not aware of the research that shows that babies metabolize and eliminate these drugs three times faster than adults. My son was miserable on Prevacid for WEEKS until I finally convinced my doctor by showing her the marci-kids info to increase his dose to the proper level. Then things turned around and he’s been fine since. He did continue to throw up, but that’s because these meds do not stop the vomitting…they just have to outgrow that which my son seems to have done now at 9 months of age.

And BTW…I did try thickening since I was pumping anyway, and he threw up just as much when his food was thickened.

Here’s the marci-kids link. http://www.marci-kids.com/

Good luck. I hope you get this all sorted out soon and have a happier baby soon.

Oh yeah…I forgot to add that. Laura’s right about the enzymes in breast milk breaking the cereal down making it difficult to thicken breast milk. You have to use LOTS of cereal and then your baby is getting more cereal than milk. And the milk gets thinner and thinner as the feeding progresses.

We used cereal to thicken Kaelyn’s bottles from the time that she was 3 weeks old until she stopped taking bottles at 15 months. When we first started, it was with expressed breast milk and we didn’t see much improvement for the enzyme reasons that others have mentioned. At 4 weeks old, we realized that Kaelyn was allergic to something that I was eating, so we switched to Nutramigen thickened with rice cereal. Kaelyn was a huge spitter, and thickening lessened the spit up considerably. So, in our case, I think that it was the best decision. I don’t think that she would ever have gained weight any other way. However, I have read several articles stating that introducing cereals before 4 months (and before 6 months with allergy-prone babies) significantly increases their chances of having food allergies later in life. I will always wonder if introducing cereal so early is part of the reason for her allergies. So, I don’t think that I would do it with a baby that has silent reflux. While the cereal definitely decreased Kaelyn’s spitting, I never saw an improvement with her silent reflux.