Thickening Bottles

[Anonymous]

My apologies if this has already been posted or asked but have people had success thickening bottles with rice cereal? Has it caused constipation at all? Has it helped babies eat or easily without as much discomfort?

Thanks
Adam

[Anonymous]

my lo had no luck with cereal in her bottles. It made her reflux more intense and it did cause constipation.

[hellbennt]

I think thickening is good for those babies that need the extra calories and for those who are aspirating. I also think that there are other ways to do these things- but I am no expert in this!! I think there is a way to make formula more caloric, but this needs to be done by a medical professional to make sure baby doesn’t get dehydrated/gets enough liquid. And, for thickening to help with aspiration, there are thickening agents made especially for this called Simply Thick and Thick it…after baby is evaluated (by a speech pathologist) then parents are told exactly what consistancy the liquid needs to be (terms like ‘nectar’ and ‘honey’ are used).

here is a link to an article I have saved: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=3806288&dopt=AbstractPlus

[Anonymous]

Thickening was the only way we could get my son to take a bottle. He would absolutely scream and arch his back otherwise. We actually thickened with oatmeal and not rice. We didn’t have any constipation problems.

[Anonymous]

We thickened our son’s formula with oatmeal. It was the only way he would take a bottle. He was absolutely miserable otherwise.

[Anonymous]

Kaelyn needed her bottles to be thickened in order for her to keep anything down. She also needed the extra calories. We had to mix her formula to be a higher calorie as well. We started with rice, had constipation issues and switched to oatmeal.

Alex also had a lot of spitting issues, but we were able to work around it and we didn’t thicken her bottles.

[Author]

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