Prevacid losing its effect in 2months?

[Anonymous]

hi,
I’m new to this forum, but I’ve read many posts on here and have learned a lot.

However, I really need some help now and hopefully someone with great knowledge can shine some lights on me.

My DD just turned 5 month old 4 days ago. She has been on Prevacid since she was 2.5 month. At first, her dosage was 7mg 1x a day, then it stopped working, the doctor upped her dosage to 7mg 2x a day. She was fine on it, slept ok and ate ok (not great) for about 1 month until she had trouble sleeping and refused to eat again! The doctor upped her dosage to 15mg 2x a day about a month ago (at her 4 month check up- she weighted 15 lb). She did great on this dosage until now, a month later. Now, for the last 3 days she would scream and cry after first oz of milk. I can’t get her to drink more than 1 oz. The only time I can get her to drink more is when I distract her with a TV on, or when she’s sleepy and basically drink in her sleep. But whatever I do she would stop drinking at 3-4 oz. Her total oz per day is only around 16 oz. I weight her every day, and she went from 95 percentile in weight at 4 month to 70 percentile at 5 month. It’s going down at fast speed and I”m really worried.
I have scheduled to go see her ped tomorrow morning. But I want to know if anyone on here has experienced Prevacid losing its effect?? or is there might be something else?

thank you in advance for your help.

[hellbennt]

what form of prevacid? if it’s liquid, made at the pharmacy, then that’s the problem I would bet.

if you are giving solutabs: are you making sure to give on an empty stomach, followed by a ‘meal’ 30 minutes later?

if you’re giving capsules, are also giving on an empty stomach followed by a meal 30 minutes later? are you opening the capsule and sprinkling the beads on a bit of applesauce?

[Anonymous]

hi Laura,
It’s 30mg solutab. I break it into 2. I put 15mg in a syringe with water and shake it until it dissolve. Then give it to her on empty stomach (her meal before this is always at least 2 hour ahead). I wait until 50 minutes to 1 hour then I feed her. This method has been working fine…but it seems that she needs higher dosage every 2-3 weeks. Does this sound normal? I ask my hubby, which is a general doctor, and he said..generally people don’t get used to the med this way. But he doesn’t specialize in babies so he doesn’t know much about this.

[Anonymous]

Hi there. Your situation sounds similar to what we went through with my daughter. It’s a hard situation. It does sound like you’re giving the med right, and that her dose is in a good range.

Two things come to mind. One is that reflux peaks within 4-6 months of age when it’s at it’s worst, and often starts to improve between 9-12 months when most babies outgrow it. Some outgrow it later between 12-24 months, though most are in the first group. During the worst phase, we were up to almost 42mg/day, but that was a VERY high dose, and really 30mg is fine for most. It is possible that she would do better with 3 daily doses. I’d check out http://www.marci-kids.com to read more about dosing information. Some babies do better with 3 daily doses due to their increased metabolism of the meds. The other thing to think about trying is buffer babies- a different way to deliver the med. We used caracream, and it worked better for my daughter b/c some babies with reflux never have an empty stomach to allow the solutabs to really work completely.

The second thing that I’m thinking of is that your daughter may have developed a feeding aversion. My dd was younger when this happened, but she was always difficult to feed and then stopped eating at 2 months old, where we could then only feed her when asleep and even that was a struggle. She rarely took more than 16 ounces a day and it consumed all of our time trying to get her to eat. My daughter also dropped percentiles from the high end, and then down to about the 40th, but they said that wouldn’t worry until she became failure to thrive. That’s what all the docs told us and we saw many. Most suggested that I was too worried about things and that she could feel my stress or other stupid things.

What I would suggest is to see a ped GI if you’re not already. See if there’s any wiggle room to try an increased dose, or bufferbabies or a 3x daily dosing regimen and see if that helps the feeding. If not, then you might want to consider trying a hypoallergenic formula and see if that helps, as sometimes MSPI causes reflux. If still no improvement, then I’d ask for a feeding evaluation (done by an OT or SLP) to see how she’s feeding. Also, if needed, a dietician may be able to suggest ways to increase calorie intake by making hypercaloric feeds to get more bang for your buck. We had to do this with my dd to help.

Other than that, feeding therapy is the best route for a feeding aversion, but the solution is longer term instead of a quick fix.

If it offers any consolation, my daughter had a terrible feeding aversion, only slept fed and with difficulty. She rarely took more than 16oz a day, dropped percentiles but never lost weight overall. Solids were also a problem, as was mood and sleep. I thought that I might lose it. BUT, she is a normal eater now and today told me that the best part of her day at her new daycare was that she “tried salad for the first time!”.

Hang in there. Good luck.

[Anonymous]

hi Lori,
thank you so much for the info. you explained it very well.
We just got home from the ped’s appointment.The ped thinks her body is getting used to prevacid and therefore not as effective. While we were there, her ped made a phone call to a ped gi specialist to discuss my DD’s situation.They decided to change her med to omeprazol.
I hope this new med will work and stay effective longer than Prevacid. I find it very interesting that my DD stop responding to prevacid after 2 months.

[Anonymous]

Good luck. Omeprazole can be hard to give. Usually they compound it, and it’s rarely made right, hence I personally found that it didn’t work well. Check out the intstructions for compounding stickied under the medications section. If your med has flavouring then it’s already likely not made correctly. If it doesn’t, then it tastes AWFUL. You might want to look into zegerid, though we didn’t use it. I was happier with prevacid. For us, switching meds didn’t make a difference really. Switching doses to a good dose was what did it. Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Lori,
I’m also afraid this new med will just be like prevacid-stop working in a short amount of time. Prevacid was so great for 2 months, and out of a sudden, it stop working. My DD is miserable at feeding and she’s on 15mg 2x a day. Her ped said that’s the max she can give, and she doesn’t think increasing dose will do any good at this moment.
All the Moms I spoke to love prevacid and they work wonder. I just don’t know why my DD stop responding to them. I’m so clueless.

[Anonymous]

Have you seen any signs of teething? The reason I ask is b/c my DD began teething @ 5 months old. I too, at first, thought that she was developing a tolerance for her med. It wasn’t until she got a little older, and having switched meds(to prevacid), began teething again, that I realized teething was the culprit. Just something to consider as prevacid doesn’t normally develop tolerances.

On a side note, I’m w/Lori about the omeprazole. It didn’t work for us & doesn’t seem to work for many other LOs on here. Good Luck & HTH!

[Anonymous]

Figuring this thing out is often a lot of trial and error. It’s not you- it’s just really tricky to figure out what the problem is and how to fix it. Often it’s a few good months or weeks, then a few bad, upping the dose, then a few more good, etc. Hope things get under control for you soon. It’s so hard.

[Anonymous]

Thank you all for your support!

Amber, she’s not teething. Her ped checked it out and she didn’t think teething is the problem. I didn’t see any signs of teething either. In fact, I’m sure it has to do with reflux since she’s been throwing up almost at every meal. And she spit up like crazy, even when she’s sleeping. It is so sad to see her suffer:(

I started Zegerid on her last night. So far, it hasn’t done anything yet. No improvement whatsoever. It’s also hard to give it to her. She end up spitting it out. The meds make her gag. I find it if I dilute it with water she’ll take it, but it takes time. I wonder if Zegerid is like Prevacid, will takes 7-10 days until I can see some improvement? Does anyone know? Also, I’m confused on the waiting period. On the patient booklet, it says wait at least 1 hour before meal, but I remember someone mentioned that there’s no waiting period. I think marci-kids website says that too. Can anyone clarify?
Thank you so much.
Also, I have a questio

[Anonymous]

No need to wait or time around meals. Marci-kids developed it, and they will also confirm that. I think the booklet says that just to be cautious.

[Anonymous]

Lori,
Thank you again.

[Anonymous]

we seem to have a similar experience wtih Prevacid. we were started on a compounded version at 5mg twice a day and we had two decent weeks, then we noted an acute decline again. we figured it must be true about the instable compound version, so we were switched to solutab 7.5 mg twice a day. again, we enjoyed 5 pretty good days, then all of a sudden an acute decline again. has anyone seen such rapid changes in Prevacid response. I know we are way below Marci-kids dosing. it does make me worry a bit, but might be necessary to keep going up?

[hellbennt]

up Up UP! I answered your other post 🙂
you can always go back down….
http://www.marci-kids.com is at the FOREFRONT in the researchin this area

[Anonymous]

I’d also go up. We really saw no improvement with the PPI at all until we were on 30mg. Before that we had a few minor improvements here and there.

[Author]

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