Is medicine necessary?

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone. I’m new here so if my question has already been answered somewhere please point me in the right direction.

My youngest daughter was doing great on regular milk based formulas, chowing down 4-6 oz at least every 2-3 hours. Around 6-7 weeks she started refusing to eat. She would take maybe 1-2 ounces and cry when we tried to give her the rest. I noticed that she was really burpy, spitting up more, but not a whole lot, and sometimes it would come through her nose. She started gulping and coughing during feeding as well. I tried all different kinds of bottles and nipples and nothing seemed to help. She went to the pediatrician, he thought it was reflux and put her on a soy formula. This didn’t help either. The next step was medicine.

So, she started taking 1ml of zantac three times a day. I put her on Enfamil Gentlease formula and started adding a bit of rice cereal to a few bottles. Some days she’ll do well, some not. Other than refusing the bottle after 1-2 oz, she is happy and sleeps well. At most she will take 3-4oz, and that’s a good feeding. If she stops to burp, many times she is done and won’t accept the bottle again. She is not fussy, but her formula intake is lower, less than 20 oz per day. So, and please don’t berate me for this, I feed her food. If she feeds poorly, then I’ll wait 15-30 minutes and try again, if she till doesn’t eat, then I mix the formula with cereal and sometimes fruit and she happily eats it from a spoon. I only do this at most twice a day.

My question is, how do I know the zantac is helping? I called the doctor to let him know how she was doing (after 8 days of being on the meds) and he is putting me off since she’s not crying or dehydrated. She acts like she really wants to eat, but won’t. Sometimes she’ll go three feedings in a row inhaling her bottle with no problems. Then the next two feedings I can barely get an ounce down and she is burping a lot. (with a wet sound, like I can hear it refluxing up her throat) Then she might eat a little better. Sometimes if I feed her solids, she’ll drink the whole bottle afterwards.

She is now 10 weeks old and is doing great, just not really loving the bottle. I’ve had such mixed results I don’t know if the medicine is doing anything for her. Sometimes she does worse after a dose of it. She has no signs of a milk protein allergy at all- never has, don’t know why he prescribed soy formula first. I hate using medicine, so if she is fine without it, I’d like to ditch it.

Sorry this is so long, but it’s so puzzling after having three babies who loved their bottles and had no aversions.

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