Short improvement from Nutramigen?

First I want to say I have a lot of faith in our doctor, she is a GI specialist within our pediatrician practice. She diagnosed him immediately with reflux when I showed up in her office out of my mind with worry because he had barely eaten or slept in 36 hours. She prescribed Zantac .9 ml 3 times per day and told us to get regular adult Maalox and give him 2 ml up to 4 times per day for pain. I have read on these boards that only Mylanta without aluminum should be given – why is that? The Maalox does contain aluminum.

My son has silent reflux, he has only spit up about 3 times in his life and two were when he was one day old. His symptoms are screaming the moment he wakes up, frantically trying to eat from the breast or bottle, and then after a few swallows screaming and pulling away, arching his back, kicking very hard with his legs and clenching his fists. He make terrible faces, sticks out his tongue, and has bad breath when he’s screaming. He often wears himself out and spends the next few hours half awake whimpering and sometimes crying.

We saw huge improvement from the first day on meds but he was still not 100%. Then after about a week he began to gradually get worse. When he was diagnosed he was getting mostly breastmilk but also regular Enfamil about 2-4 oz per day. After he was diagnosed I completely cut out the formula for a while but I don’t think it made any difference. Then this past Saturday I bought a can of Nutramigen. At first he hated the taste and cried every time he ate. Then we began to mix it with breastmilk which he seemed to tolerate well. He also seemed to improve dramatically! Within 48 hours he was a sweet, smiling, calm, happy baby. He also slept for 7 hours! The longest he ever slept before was 4!

I’m here tonight because the improvement seems to have stopped very suddenly. This afternoon he got a bit fussy while we were out shopping. We came home and he just continued to get worse by the minute, until he was screaming and arching his back just like he used to. Has anyone else experienced this brief improvement that completely vanishes!? I am physically sick right now seeing him back to being in pain when we just experienced such a short time with the happy baby we would have if he wasn’t suffering. Is there anything I can do? We are decreasing the amount of breastmilk we add to the formula gradually and I have already cut all dairy, soy, and caffeine from my diet. My doctor gave me a rx for Prevacid and told me I could fill it if I felt like we were not happy with the Zantac/Nutramigen combo. She also gave me instructions for keeping him on Zantac for the first few weeks of Prevacid. I don’t know if I want to add more meds right now – I just want the improvement back that we had for the past two days!

Please share your advice and experiences with this. I cannot believe we had such a drastic improvement and then it completely disappeared in one afternoon. Thank you!