Elimination Diet

[Anonymous]

My son Jackson is 6 weeks old and was diagnosed with reflux one week ago. His primary symptoms are gagging, arching his back, occasional spit up, poor sleep, excessive crying and nursing for hours. He is taking 2 ml of zantac per day. It does not seem to be doing much. Interestingly, it did seem to have an impact during the first few days, but the last couple of days we are back to square one.

I am breastfeeding and I started Dr. Sears Elimination Diet yesterday. I stocked up on pears, rice pasta, rice, rice beverage, etc. My question is whether it is okay to have vanilla flavored rice beverage or any of the rice deserts during the first two weeks. I am determined to stick to this diet despite how restrictive it is!

[hellbennt]

while I wholeheartedly encourage you to do the diet, I also want to encourage you to perhaps try medication first because otherwise you’ll never know if the medicine helped or if the diet did and then you’ll be stuck on the diet forever & that’s not what it is intended for…

2mls a day is 30mgs (check your bottle it should say 15mgs per ml)

I’ll arbitrarily calculate for a 10lb baby:

10lbs = 4.5 kilos

4.5 x 10 = 45mgs per day total for a 10lb baby & your baby is getting 30mgs…

SO: I would calculate the zantac for 10mgs per kilo, see how that does and try & get in to a ped Gi or family dr who will prescribe the marci-kids PPI doses…then, I’d go for the diet…unless you’re also seeing intolerance symptoms like rashes, mucousy (stringy) stools, constipation, frequent green watery stools. etc….

[Anonymous]

hi there,

i couldn’t agree more with Laura.

getting the pain under control is very important or you will feel ike nothing is working.

hugs

[Anonymous]

I too agree in theory about not changing too many things at once or you’ll have trouble knowing what really worked….but that being said, I was so desperate to get my son relief that I didn’t care. My attitude in those early days was to do everything (diet & meds) that might possibly help him, then sort it all out later 🙂

I started the TED about 3 months ago, and it has greatly helped my Nathan. Before going on it, every feeding was a wrestling match….he would writhe in pain and latch off several times, screaming and arching. It was so pitiful! Within two days of starting the diet, all the feedings were calm and peaceful and have remained that way unless I try to add something back into my diet with a lot of protein (dairy, soy, nuts, beans). His sleep, however, has only really improved with the proper dose of Prevacid.

In our case, the protein intolerances that my son has affect our feedings more than anything else, and his GERD (due to an immature esophageal “valve”) seems to affect his sleep more than anything else. For example, even when the feedings calmed down on the diet, Nathan still would wake up screaming from reflux pain after very short naps all throughout the day. Now that his GERD is pretty much under control on 30 mg of Prevacid, he is sleeping much better. But if I try to add something into my diet that bothers him, he can have a terrible feeding but still take a long nap shortly after. Hope that made sense….I’m getting tired 🙂

Anyway, to answer your original question about the vanilla rice milk — I used it from the beginning with no problems. Not sure about other moms, though.

Good luck to you! I have to say I hope you don’t find that your son is helped by the TED — it is no fun!!! But the only reason I can still do it is because we saw such an amazing improvement with Nathan (and I have managed to successfully add back in a dozen or so things since the beginning). Keep us posted!!

[Anonymous]

I also used Vanilla Rice Milk from day 1 on the diet. I hope you are doing OK these past couple of days on the TED. Did you check out all of the information in the TED section of this forum? You might get some other ideas about ways to prepare these basic ingredients. https://www.infantreflux.org/forum/forum_topics.asp?FID=43 and https://www.infantreflux.org/forum/forum_topics.asp?FID=44

Hang in there…and try hard never to be without something prepared in the fridge and ready to reheat. It is hard enough to be on TED anyway without feeling hungry while trying to cook food as well as care for a little one.

[Anonymous]

Kim,

How is the TED going? I’ve been doing a modified version of it but Sophia is still struggling, so I’m thinking I might bite the bullet and go full TED. Just wanted to see how it’s working out for your little peanut?

Andrea

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