Home › Forums › Infant Reflux Information › Medicines › Breast Feeding vs, swithing to Formula
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November 20, 2009 at 4:49 pm #64633
Anonymous
InactiveHi I am new to here but I need some help!!!
My little girl is 2mths old and is currently on Prevacid Tablets 15mg split in half once a day. And we were doing good but called GI doc today because she seems to be going back down hill so they are putting her back on Zantac 2 a day!!!! With the prevacid. I have done a lot of reading on the posts and it does seem like she is underdosed based on the Marci kids recommendations. I will ask GI doc about that one.Has anyone had any relief going from Breastfeeding to Formula?????? I am getting a lot of pressure from family and friends to just switch her to formula and they think that is the magic answer!!!I am also on the elimination diet. No milk, no butter at all. Even the hidden ones.I am getting so desparate here I am staring to lose all hope!Please help!November 20, 2009 at 7:40 pm #64636hellbennt
Keymasterhang in there!
if you want to breastfeed, then just do it.
if you switch to formula, there is nothing to say that you won’t have the same kind of frustrations, having to switch from one formula to the next.when you say elimination diet, ‘we’ need to know what you mean- do you mean Dr Sears Total elimination diet where you’re only eating potatoes, rice, free range lamb & turkey?
how long have you been on whatever your diet is?
why did you go on the diet?
have you seen any results?I have a LOT MORE TO SAY- so don’t give up!!!!
November 20, 2009 at 8:11 pm #64638InactiveHi there. My DS is 6 weeks, but this is my 2nd go around so I caught things pretty early. I think you can most definitely still breast feed. You probably just need to look into a few things. Like Laura said, are you eliminating ALL dairy, even hidden, like caesin and whey? Your baby may be reacting to other things in your diet like soy, caffeine, citrus, onions, chocolate, nuts among others. You can choose to eliminate the big offenders or do Dr. Sears Total Elimination Diet, which is what I am currently on. It took a long time to really see results, like almost 3 weeks. Milk proteins tend to stay in mom’s system for 2 weeks and then baby’s for another 2 weeks, so it could take a month. Also, a huge issue for me was overactive letdown, which I am still struggling with. Sometimes reflux is caused by OAL, and sometimes the symptoms mirror each other. Anyways, go to the link listed below, it is DEFINITELY the best information I have read when it comes to breastfeeding and diet.
November 20, 2009 at 8:45 pm #64640InactiveHang in there… if you want to continue bf’ing then by all means do!!
Breastmilk is best for reflux (& I think Laura has a link for that-lol).
I also would like to know how long you’ve been on the diet? What are you avoiding right now… etc. All the things others’ mentioned.
Is your db still having stinky gas?
Is your db still having mucousy stools?
Many many ppl around me were very quick to say “just try the formula” but even my ped & ped GI both discouraged this (which was very helpful) as they didn’t think it would help ds any quicker than the road to recovery (in his colon).
Just so you know, it can take a LONG time for your db’s intestines/colon to heal even if you only ate ‘normal’ for a short time (I only did for about 4 wks)…
Okay, sorry for rambling & will look forward to hearing back!
Hang in there – we are here to support you!
ETA: also wanted to mention that yes, it seems like your Prevacid dose is low…so push for an increase there too!
erinntx 2009-11-20 20:47:19 November 20, 2009 at 11:35 pm #64644InactiveWow thanks for the support. As I said I am new to hear and didn’t expect someone to respond so soon. So thanks in advance.
Well here goes our story…..As I said Shea was born on 9/9/09 (not planned VBAC).Probably at around 3wks I noticed her having a lot of discomfort and pain in her belly and then the vomitting started.So the first thing I did was cut out the obvious milk items not everything made with milk.So on 10/10/09 1 mth old I cut out everthing made with milk – whey included. I didn’t know about the other item caseim…On 10/16/09 went to doctors and they gave her Zantac 1.3ml twice a day.She was doing pretty good so on 10/19/09 started to introduce things made with milk – just didn’t have the obvious milk things.On 10/2709 – we went down hill so on 11/2/09 went back to no milk products and nothing made from milk.Basically reading every label of every item I ate.Back to docs on 11/6/09 and put her on Prevacid Solutabs 15mg cut in half once a day on empty stomach and continued the Zantac 2day for 4days then cut down to 1 a day for 3days.So that put us to 11/13/09 and noticed in my journal that she started to get cranky in the evenings starting after 13th.And this week has been horrible in the evenings. Called GI doc today and she put her back on the Zantac twice a day.Her symptons:After breastfeeding she usually wet burps and then spits/vomits up a bit and then crys in discomfort and her legs get real stiff and she crys hard.She will then sometimes try and nurse again to soothe her.Tonight she had a rough night so I gave her some Mylanta and that seemed to help. She is a good sleeper for the most part.I do avoid nuts, caffeine, citrus… all things that a person with acid reflux would avoid (I have a friend that is an adult and is currently dealing with reflux so I almost ask her what burns her and then I avoid it) I have nothing spicy. I avoid all things with a tomotoe base, etc…I am not on the Dr. Sears Elimination diet but I will check it out to see if maybe I am and don’t know it.I have gone out and got a lot of VEGAN items like cheeses and butter. I do like to eat a lot of vegetarian things but I haven’t been able to because a lot of them have milk in them. So now I am wondering whether or not the soy is bothering her.Thats why I feel like I am beating myself up with this whole food thing… I am like was it something I ate. I feel like I can’t eat anyting and with the holidays coming up that should be real interesting!!!I have a son who I breastfeed for a whole year with no problems so this is all new to me.That is funny that you said that about stinky gas – I did notice just about a week ago that I could smell her poop which I couldn’t before I was wondering whether or not it was the Prevacid.She doesn’t seem to have mucusy stools but it is hard to tell with breast feed babies. There poop always seems watery.She does seem to have a rash on her bottom very often. I have been trying to figure that one out. The only thing I can think of why she has it now is that on 11/15/09 I gave her some frozen milk that I had pumped probably the 2nd week I was home because of engorgement and it probably had milk in it.That is the other thing I am confused on… how long does it take to see if something I ate is affecting her.On Thurs I had a veggie hotdog and a little bit of saurekraut and 2 drops of ketchup and some beans and all hell broke out that night. I kind of knew that it was a bad lunch for me but I was having a weak moment and broke down.I am really wondering whether or not what I am eating is having that much affect on her. She doesn’t have any blood in her stools. And I get the imperssion from the GI doc that she thinks she doesn’t have a milk issue, maybe a sensitivity but not an allergy.Anyway I feel like I am just rambling now so I will stop typing and see what you guys have to say and go do some more research.Thanks for all your help.November 21, 2009 at 12:46 am #64645InactiveFirst of all, great job so far – you’re doing great & have made some great changes already for your db being so young! Go you!
Okay, so you’ve been off dairy for long enough that if she was *just* reacting to that then her stools should be baselined/regulated… which means she’s probably reacting to something else in your diet. If I were you I’d continue to avoid ALL dairy (hidden included) & also do one of two things:
1) eliminate all soy (hidden included) OR
2) do TED (total elimination diet)
The pros & cons is that if you eliminate all soy & after 2 wks she’s still reacting then you’ll probably start TED @ that point but then you’re 2+ wks in & she’s still miserable… but TED can be challenging (definitely do-able)… but usually doing TED will see positive change quickly.
Here’s a link re: hidden dairy:
http://www.kellymom.com/store/freehandouts/hidden-dairy01.pdf
Here’s Dr. Sears’ info on TED (but there’s more info here @ infant reflux too):
http://www.askdrsears.com/html/4/T041200.asp
If you decided to do TED I have lots of food options/choices (I was on it for a looong time)… many that are ‘convenience’ foods to help make your life easier. Just let me know.
In general, if a breastfed baby is having stinky gas consistently then s/he is reacting to something in your diet.
Stools should be sweet smelling, yellow, seedy (but you know that since you breastfed your 1st child)… anything else that’s consistent (ie: green, mucous, etc) is probably an offender in your diet.
Don’t worry about the holidays- just make a plan 4-7 days @ a time & reassess… it’s so easy to drive yourself crazy thinking too far ahead.
It can take as little as 2-4hrs for something to affect her (in our case it affected reflux before it affected intestinal pain). In general it takes about 12hrs (in our case @ least) for it to start affected stools/stinky gas.
Don’t beat yourself up about a ‘weak’ moment – it happens & it’s okay.
Fwiw, our 1st ped GI said that Evan didn’t have any allergies/intolerances & Prevacid wouldn’t help him… he couldn’t have been MORE wrong. Trust your instincts. She doesn’t have to have visible blood in her stools. Evan only had a little visible but he had hidden blood (found w/ hemoccult testing) for 5-6 wks before he baselined & his colon was healed.
As far as the meds… it will be hard to judge her behavior & say whether it’s diet related (ie: intestinal pain) or reflux related until she’s on a higher dose of Prevacid & her reflux pain is completely managed. Also, are you giving her the Zantac @ least 4 hrs apart from the Prevacid?! Make sure you are or the Prevacid won’t be effective. Mylanta has to be 1 hr apart from Prevacid. You can give Mylanta with Zantac…don’t have to time around it. Feel free to use Mylanta (1mL) up to 5x/day- it’s a great tool to have!
Okay, I think I addressed all your points…sorry if it’s confusing/jumbled. I just had to stay up late to respond to you b/c I remember (like it was yesterday) being in your shoes. I also breastfed my 1st son (for 20 mths) w/ absolutely no issues so Evan was a learning experience 😉 to me. I’m having our 3rd son in Jan so we’ll see what happens there.
erinntx 2009-11-21 00:54:51 November 21, 2009 at 9:59 am #64647Keymasterjust chiming in to agree w/ what Erin posted.
I can tell you what I did, because that’s all I know, lol.
First of all I was desperate! My case was a little different because I didn’t think it was my diet because my baby was having ‘normal’ breastfed baby stools and he didn’t have any rashes or excema…
what I did was RESEARCH to find out what medications would help him and, when I was at the peak of being the most deperate (he would litterally howl/shriek for hours on end!!!), I did the Dr Sears TED, which I learned about here…
the diet is hard, but like Erin said, it’s do-able AND when I did it, it was way back when (HA!) and I didn’t have posts from Erin and Diane (you’ll see their posts if you decide to do the TED) and others to guide me!
Anyway, in my case, it was NOT my diet that was affecting my son’s horrible GERD, but I DID find out that there actually WERE some foods that I ate that affected him.
You ask how long it takes to find out if a food is affecting your baby. Well, if you do the TED then after two weeks of it, when you start adding foods back, that’s when you learn what might be affecting your baby.
Milk proteins and soy proteins take the longest to ‘clear out’ of your system so if after the first two weeks of TED you see improvement with stools & gas then I wouldn’t jump to adding THOSE back in- I would try for adding some ‘normal’ foods like fruits and veggies…
and, in the meantime, I would RESEARCH and FIGHT to get a higher dose of prevacid for the baby. and, CONTINUE the zantac!!! I learned the hard way that until your baby is on a proper dose of PPI (thats prevacid), s/he may still experience pain and until you get the PPI dose ‘right’ you probably will need the zantac, too.
when you give zantac, make sure to space it a good 4 hrs from the prevacid.
as for the prevacid, http://www.marci-kids.com is at the forefront of research in dosing of PPIs in infants and really, I know it’s hard to take advice from strangers on the internet, but they truly know their stuff…they have helped many many babies over the course of my time here (SIX YEARS!) and even before that!November 21, 2009 at 1:21 pm #64658InactiveUggh… I had a whole post ready to go and I hit a button on my computer and lost it…. so this one is going to be shorter because I don’t know how long she will let me type without crying.
I so wonder whether it is my diet or not?Erin what made you think it was your diet – was it just the stools? And why hasn’t my GI doc tested her stool?Did either of you ever try formula?I think I am going to take your advice on not changing anything with my diet for now and get her stable again on the medicine.As far as the whole soy thing goes I was wondering that because I had gone to the whole food store last weekend and bought some cheese (Vegan) and had that this week. Cutting out soy I don’t know if I have it in me as of today anyway to say I could cut that out for 2wks. Besides I think like you said I should her back on track with the medicine.The whole formula thing sounds like a great idea for everyone else but for me I have to keep pumping at every feeding to keep my supply up and who knows how she would react to the formula.Thanks for all your help on here it is nice to just get some of this stuff out of my head because today it is spinning!! I woke up this morning excited to see if any of you responded – so thanks something to look forward to in this sad time.I just want to enjoy my little girl like I did with my son. I just want her to feel happy all the time and not just for a little bit. I get so excited when she is happy.November 21, 2009 at 2:16 pm #64659Keymaster(SO SORRY about all the underlined words!!!)
hmm…I don’t think I said to forego the diet and ‘just’ look at medication…
what I meant was, address diet AND address medication…
a for testing the stool- well just TELL your dr you want the stool tested for occult blood (blood you cannot see). that’s about all the testing there is to do regarding stools.
how ARE your baby’s stools? if they are ‘normal’ mustardy/seedy breastfed baby stools then, ok, maybe hold off on the diet. BUT if they are frequently green (SOME green is ok, just not all the time), and/or mucousy then it just might be a protein in your milk.
some
signs of mspi are, but are not limited to:gas: foul-smelling, painful gas
as for medication: we can start w/ your baby’s zantac dose. how much does your baby weigh? my educated guess is that even the zantac dose might not be as high as it ‘can’ be….
hellbennt 2009-11-21 14:18:42 November 21, 2009 at 4:40 pm #64662InactiveI only have a sec & I’m doing about 5 things @ once-lol (so excuse my disorganization or confusion) but I wanted to clarify that I didn’t say to stay doing the same thing w/ your diet… I suggested continuing to eliminate dairy (including hidden) PLUS consider a) eliminating all soy OR b) doing TED.
As far as the soy thing… up to 60% (I think that’s the stat) of milk/dairy intolerant babies are also soy intolerant.
My ds’s stools were consistently green. Mucous (looked like green jelly in our case) most of the time for a while, then eventually all the time. Stinky gas all the time. Some other symptoms that made me realize that something was wrong (ie: ds had bad intestinal pain) was he seemed like he was constipated, like he was straining all the time (when he was by no means ‘constipated’). He was very restless & wiggly b/c he was in pain.
No, we never tried formula b/c the drs. (general ped & ped GI) both encouraged continued bf’ing (fwiw, dh or myself weren’t wanting to quit but it helped to have doctors on our side). There was a point when they even thought that the formula wouldn’t help him b/c he was so sensitive. I also don’t pump well (well, my boobs don’t) so I didn’t want to have to deal w/ that (but that was a small piece of it). That being said, if you want to try formula & don’t feel up to dietary interventions by all means try… I just wanted to throw that out there b/c if you want to do that- no guilt!!
Your dr. can test using hemoccults but the problem is that the intestinal bleeding is intermitent… SO, only 1 out of 3 tests might test positive for blood (this was the case for us) when your dd is really in a lot of pain. We started testing @ home (I have info on ordering tests somewhere – let me know if you’re interested) & we tested every.single.diaper & eventually every single test was positive for hidden blood.
As Laura kind of touched on – the advice I always give mamas that are overwhelmed by limited diet choices is to focus on what you CAN eat & not on what you CAN’T… it’s a lot less daunting.
Okay, think that’s it!
Hang in there 🙂
November 21, 2009 at 7:56 pm #64663Inactiveokay sorry about my confusion about what you said. I just got all messed up when my original post got erased.
So what I meant to say…. I am going to stay with the milk elimination and butter items for now until I get her stable. And then will reconsider at that point. I can’t think that far ahead right now I need to think about tomorrow and tonight 1st. Then I will think about the soy and TED thingy. I feel just too overwhelmed right now, maybe I will feel better when she isn’t crying as much.Besides…. I have never seen that kind of stool from her. It has never been green mucusy. It was green a couple of times but I know that is normal from from my son who was EBF for 1yr. It is always yellow and seedy and she doesn’t have a problem going at all in fact almost everyone one of her diapers has stool in it. She never seems constipated at all.So I guess the big question is is she milk intolerant at all????…thats why I asked about the whole stool thing.I started the milk elimination on my own in a desperate attempt before I went to GI doc.I think my GI was leaning towards not being milk allergy but she didn’t want me to change too many variables at once.For some reason I can’t see Laura’s post but I think she asked me about her Zantac dose. It is 1.5ml’s 2 times a day. today I gave it to her at 2;30 and then again at 6:30.She had a bad day today and my husband got to see it and he said he gives me a lot of credit for dealing with this daily! That felt nice in a wierd kind of way.I just am going to start praying that this gets better really soon!!!!I am just so sad that she is crying and it is because of her discomfort.Like your GI mine also recommended not to change to formula yet. I guess I am desparate for a miracle answer of some sort!!!!November 21, 2009 at 8:04 pm #64664Inactivewhen I post a reply I can’t see all the posts so I had to exit out and reread Laura’s post.
Yes her poops are just yellow mustardy but then again I am not having any milk but I don’t think I ever saw green mucusy stool. She does have a red rash on her bum some times today it is all cleared up.November 21, 2009 at 8:10 pm #64665Keymasterif your baby is 10lbs, then she is on a good dose of zantac…
1.5ml + 1.5ml = 3mls total for the day of zantac
10 lbs = 4.5kilos
max. dose of zantac is 10mgs per kilo;
10 x4.5 = 45mgs total for the dayyour bottle of zantac should read 15mgs/ml, so
45 divided by 15 = 3mls totalNovember 21, 2009 at 8:18 pm #64666Inactiveshe weighs 12 to 13lbs.
and I’m sorry she is getting 1.3ml and my bottle says 15mgsNovember 21, 2009 at 8:45 pm #64667Keymasterthen her zantac can be increased a bit- the amount she’s on right now is for a 10lb baby & zantac is (can be) very weight sensitive…
12 & 1/2 lbs = 6 kilos
6 x 10 = 60 so this is the total amount of mgs a day of zantac
your med is in a liquid form, mls, so for every 1ml of liquid there is 15mgs of zantac
to find out how much liquid, mls, to give her a day you divide 60 by 15 = 4mls
so that’s 4mls a day of zantac that your baby can be getting (rather than the 2.6 mls a day she’s currently taking)
make sure to give zantac 4 hrs from the prevacidZantac dosing- my/other’s question (has axid & pepcid dose,
too):https://www.infantreflux.org/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=8288&PN=1
conversion chart: http://www.sfca.co.uk/match/kilolbs.htm
hellbennt 2009-11-21 20:46:45 -
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