Thickening Feeds

[Anonymous]

Well, we just had another appointment with our Ped GI. She has recommended that we thicken Austin’s bottles with 2tsp per ounce w/oatmeal. We have thickened in the past but about half of that amount. Now he is drinking a milkshake! She has been a part of a research study showing that thickening to that consistency has been show to decrease the amount of fussiness in reflux babies. I am willing to try anything, especially now that we know that CaraCream made Austin 100% worse. My question and current issue is now that we are thickening so much, Austin is barely eating. He went up to 24oz when we started neocate and was happy for two weeks but started to get really fussy again. Now that we’ve thickened, he had a great day on Saturday but an awful day today. He is only eating 14oz now and it’s hard for him to get any solids in. The spitting up has decreased quite a bit, which is nice but I’m worried he is not getting enough nutrients. Have any of you had the same issues with thickening? How much did your babies eat when they were around 6 months? Did they get used to the thick feedings? I know his dose of Prevacid could be higher but she won’t raise it.

[Anonymous]

ugh. I am sorry! how frustrating. I think at that age they should be getting a lot more formula. I know it is like hitting a brick wall left and right, we’ve sooo been there! It’s just a shame b/c you say the thickening helps him, it just seems he isn’t getting enough liquid/formula intake. Could you call the ped-GI and let them know that he’s getting 14oz/day? I bet they won’t even like hearing that. I would see if they are willing to raise the dose. I would tell them that you’ve exhausted all avenues and the only thing you haven’t tried is the med increase, so you’d like to try it. OR, like Laura’s mentioned before (and I tried this but my ped-GI was STILL too stubborn) you could say “I was dosing the baby in the AM and my husband misunderstodd and was dosing him in the PM by mistake and OMG we have a new baby!..it works on 30mg!!!”

[Anonymous]

I had to thicken my daughters formula at 7 weeks with something called “thickit 2” it definatly helped with the spitting up. She is also on Elecare. We buy the thickit 2 from Costco, behind the pharmacy, but you don’t need a prescription. Anyone can use it. My DH’s pediatric GI uses it instead of cereal or oatmeal because it does not bind to liquids, therefore she does not get dehydrated. Water binds to the cereal and the child cannot absorb the water and can get dehydrated. We must have invested 200 dollars into all sorts of nipples. At first it took my DH forever to eat, through a nipple that we cut. She was ALWAYS fussy. My mom tried her bottle to see if she was getting anything out. She was, but the nipple wasn’t filling up again fast enough for her to get more. We FINALLY found some GREAT nipples. They are the munchkin triflow. My daughter uses it on medium, and that is all we use now!!!! Her formula with the Thickit 2 is basically a soupy pudding consistancy. scuby202007-10-22 03:24:52

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