advice please prevacid packets

[Anonymous]

My son is now 7 wks old and he is on the prevacid packets. My older son was also on the packets, but he was old enough to take 15 mg. Justice is supposed to be taking 7 mg a day. I have been halfing the packet, but I’m not sure how to make sure it is exactly half. Also he sometimes spits it back up as I’m giving it to him. I don’t know if that is why they say to give it 3x a day. Not sure how to do that either. What I mean is, not sure how to measure it for 3x a day. Any advice would be very helpful. My husband doesn’t want to change meds. again since this is our 2nd med. that we have tryed. I am willing to try another med if there is an easier way, but I have to convince dh. I have tryed the solutabs with my first son, but for some reason we went back to the packets. I can’t remember why.

Another question is: dh thought we should stop pepcid now instead of waiting until the full 2 wks. I disagreed, but tryed it anyway. Well, we are back to not sleeping and crying. It is only 2 more days until 2 wks. Should I just leave him off the pepcid? Don’t you just love it when someone gives you advice on what to do when they are not the ones dealing with the situation? < DH

Shelby

[Anonymous]

I stongly suggest staying on the pepsid while on Prevacid. My doc said no way but I took the advise from the others mothers and did.It can take 2 weeks for the Prevacid to fully work and if you are not giving them anything else he will be hurting. They are 2 different types of drugs, Emma’s ped GI recommended that we use both, just make sure to administer them 4 hours apart. I still have a script of zantac for emergency’s from her ped GI.

How much Pepsid is he on?? I am thinking 7mg of Prevacid is not enough, so that’s probably why you are not seeing a difference. I would push for more, do you have a ped GI?

As for administering it, there is really no way to determine how much you are giving when you split it, I always just eyed it the best I could when Emma was on it. What about putting it in a medicine binky? Sometimes I just put it in very slowy down the side of your mouth until it was all gone.btrue2006-6-23 10:7:9

[Anonymous]

You are always supposed to mix a full packet, measure out how much you need and toss the rest (because it will become unstable within hours). So, if you’re supposed to take it twice a day the Doc should have written the script for 2 15mg packets per day. I have a lot of experience with the packets! One thing that I want to stress is that the medicine is in the little white beads. when I first started giving it to my son, I would use a syringe to measure it and administer it – then I noticed all the white beads would stick in the syringe and the meds weren’t working. then I started measuring by spooning some into a childs medicine measuring cup (the one’s that come upsidown on bottle of cold medicine). I would make sure there were plenty of white beads in there and then I SPOON fed it to my son – starting at 1 month old!! I used the “sassy” brand spoons because they are flatter and I could slip out the spoon fast, turn it sideways over his lips (because the suck reflex makes it appear that they want to spit it out, really they just dont’ have control at that age. I did that for 5 months twice a day! I was giving him 15 mg twice a day by the time he was 20 lbs (probably earlier!) check this site for dosing recommendations: http://www.marci-kids.com/dosing.html

As far as staying on the other drugs – just dont’ give them at the same time, make sure they are spaced 4 hours apart and you should be fine (of course with your doctor’s permission).

lansima2006-6-23 13:0:34

[Anonymous]

I agree….7 mg is probably not enough. Check the marci-kids site and maybe ask your doctor for a higher dose. And I would definitely keep him on the pepcid until the prevacid kicks in. Here’s the link for marci-kids…. http://www.marci-kids.com/

Three times per day works better because babies have very high metabolism and they metabolize and eliminate the drug three times faster than adults. 5 mg three times a day probably won’t be enough. How much does he weigh?

I know what you mean about the person not dealing with the situation…My dh always tells me the same thing the docs say….”he’ll outgrow it.” Yeah, I know…but that doesn’t make in any easier now, thanks.

I hope things get better soon. (Myles is so much better….one day Justice will be, too. Hang in there. It does get better. In the meantime the right dose of Prevacid will make it much more bearable until he does outgrow it.)

[Anonymous]

You are right. After cking marci kids the dose is not enough. How can I get my doc to prescribe the right dose?

Shelby

[Anonymous]

Shelby

You can always print out the Marcy-kids pages and bring them to our doctor. Is she a ped or ped GI? All the ped GIs we have seen are willing to prescribe pretty high doses of the meds.

Secondly, you do not have to switch meds…. there is another form of prevacid that are called solutabs. Exactly same thing as tablets but in my opinion, so much easier to administer. And you can break the tablets in 2 (they are 15mg tabs).

As for the breakdown in 3 doses… i found out here and in the MARCI-KIDs website about breaking the doses because of the faster metabolism that infants have…. however, Matthew has a tube and a feeding aversion adn we go to a specialised feeding clinic and they believe in the faster metabolism but they have done their own studies on babies with GERD and they believe that actually one dose works best BUT that dose has to be given on a totally empty stomach… and that does not mean 2 hours after a meal but longer as long as you can make it… just wanted to give you a different perspective because there are different views out there… the clinic does approve high doses though.

our GI told us to keep pepcid and prevacid together for a quite a while.

[Anonymous]

Shelby,

I know that Marsha had said that you have to mix the packet, take your dose, than toss the rest, but my ped looked it up and said we could keep it in the fridge for the day. We basically kept it in for 12 hours.

As far as administering it. The easiest way we found was to put it in a little bottle. We used the “y” cut nipples and cut off all the “points”. This basically made a bigger hole. This allowed the babies to suck every last drop and white bead with 2-3 sucks. No spitting out, no mess!

[Anonymous]

Shelby,

I was able to get the higher dose of Prevacid for Myles from his doctor who was very resistant at first by printing the information from marci-kids and faxing it to her. Then I talked to her on the phone. Once she saw the research she agreed and Myles improved dramatically on the higher dose. And I agree, about the solutabs. They are so easy to administer and they taste good so Myles doesn’t mind them at all.

Good luck. I hope you can get him on a higher dose and that he will be feeling better soon.

Chrisitne

[Author]

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