Went to Speicalist, More Confused!

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

We went to the specialist yesterday, and I’m still a little confused. Dagney has improved greatly from last week, she’s still spitting up, but doesn’t really seem to be in much pain at all. We still went to the specialist and told her all the symptoms. The specialist seems to think either we need to split the dosage of the Prevacid (1/2 tablet in am, 1/2 in pm) and add rice cereal to the Nutramigen, or that she’s actually allergic to the Nutramigen and would need to move over to Neocate. She wants us to first try the medcine route for 4-5 days and see how that goes.

The reason she seems to think it may be the formula is that my daughter has some mucus in her spit up. BUT, it’s not all the time, and I’m wondering if we’re kind of misunderstanding what she means by mucus. She has a lot of saliva now, as a 14 week old, and I thnk that’s part of what we think is mucus. (she didn’t spit up, of course, while the doc was in the room, so we couldn’t show her!). I also brought along a poopy diaper so they checked it for blood and there wasn’t any. She said you can do a blood test for milk protein allergy, but it doesn’t really tell much because the allergies present themselves in different ways. She’s also scheduled for an upper GI next week just to make sure everything is ok inside, which she thought would be the case.

After yesterday, and looking back over the last few weeks, I really think my little one just needs the prevacid split and the rice cereal. The reason I think this is that she still had symptoms last week, so our pedi said to put her on the Zantac too. Well the Zantac made the situation MUCH worse, and now that she’s back off of the Zantac, she almost has no symptoms, other than the spitting up. I also think she may be waking up and crying because she’s simply hungry and the formula just wasn’t cutting it! We started putting the rice cereal in her formula yesterday afternoon, and she didn’t cry much (except for the fact that she was completley exhausted for not really napping all day because we were at the doctor), and she SLEPT ALL NIGHT! She was tough to put down, I think because she was so exhausted, but she slept from 9:30pm to 7am this morning! She actually slept from 6-7, woke up & ate again, then it took us a while to get her back down because she was so wound up.

Does this sound possible to anyone else? I don’t want to fool myself, but I kind of thought all along that she just needed her medicine adjusted. She still arches a little once in a while when she eats, and once in a while gets a little gurgle in her throat and seems to be trying to clear her throat, but she seems really good other than the spitting up, and that seems to be helped by the rice cereal. (By the way, the doc said to put 1 tablespoon of cereal per ounce, but that made it like paste almost! Does anyone have any suggestions on that?!)

Thanks for reading my rambling post, I’m trying to get it all down before she wakes from her nap. Any input would be appreciated.

[Anonymous]

When we were thickening we used 1 tablespoon for every two ounces and that seemed like a good consitency.

Splitting the Prevacid into two doses seems like a good plan….most of our babies are getting at least two doses per day.

As for the rice cereal, I think it will be a couple of days before you know if she will tolerate it well or not. Some babies get very gassy and/or constipated from rice, so watch for that.

It’s probably a good idea to do one thing at a time as far as changes go so that you can be sure what’s working and what’s not, so I think it makes sense to wait on the Neocate to see how the cereal and two doses of Prevacid work for her.

Good luck and please keep us posted.

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I’m loosing count of the weeks but I think my daughter is about 6 weeks older than yours. I agree that splitting the Prevacid will help. She might also need a higher dose. I really think that my daughter, Anika, needs 30 mg’s a day but we were lucky to get 22.5 (1.5 Solutabs a day). Read my thread about the reflux being back and you can see what we are doing to bridge the gap between the amount of meds she needs and the amount of meds our doctor will give us.

As for the cereal… Our doctor told us that is the only thing that actually acts as a cure for the reflux itslef. The meds don’t stop the spit up but make it where they are not in pain. But by getting the cereal in it helps weight things down in the tummy and that does help with the spit up. A little trick I will share with you is that we make our formula up in batches and I use the blender. This gets the cereal mixed really well plus I think it makes it easier for her to get it through a level 2 nipple.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

You know what, I think my daughter also needs a higher dose now. After a couple of days on the split dose, I notices she was just cranky and had a little symptoms all day long, so on Christmas I gave her the whole tablet in themorning again, and she was great, but then started having some symptoms in the evening again. I’m going to call the specialist today to see if we can do 1 tab in am and 1/2 in the evening, whch is what I think she really needs right now. I will find yhour thread about what you do, I’m sure it will be very helpful to me. Gotta go give my munchkin her Prevacid now, it’s been about 25 minutes since she ate, and I she’s about ready to go back down for a nap!

thanks for your advice!

[Anonymous]

Remember that Prevacid solutabls must be given on an empty stomach (at least two hours since the last feeding) and then followed up with a meal 30 minutes later.

[Anonymous]

I was told the prevacid could be given 1/2 hour after a feeding!! Is that wrong?

Also, how do I know if my daughter’s spit up is mucusy? It may sound like a stupid question, but I’m really not sure if it is or not!

Another thing with the PRevacid, I give her the solutab dissolved in a syringe & squirt it into her mouth, and a lot of it ends up pushed back out by her tongue. Does anyone have any suggestions to fight that? I was going to try dissolving it in a spoon to see if that works better.

I just spoke with the specialist’s nurse practitioner, and she didn’t want to push her to 1 tab in the am and 1/2 in the pm, so she suggested adding Pepsid at night. Has anyone tried that? We tried Zantac but she had a terrible reaction to it, so I’m a little weary of trying the Pepsid. She also said that if my daughter is really cranky, we can give her a little Mylanta or Maalox a few times a day.

[Anonymous]

I give my daughter her Prevacid in a nipple 30 minutes before her next scheduled feeding. I cut the hole of the nipple a little so that the beads can get through. I dissolve her tab in warm water (about 1ml) and put it into the nipple with a mylacon dropper as she sucks it down. I also have an extra dropper filled with warm water ready to wash any left over beads down. Its a process, but I know that she is getting all the med. Then I basically distract her for 30 minutes because she is hungry. She takes 7.5 mg at 9am and 7.5 mg at 9pm, roughly. I was giving her Mylanta at night too, but it seemed to make her worse. At least I think.

[hellbennt]

there’s a ‘Prevacid 101’ section that you can read from the Medicines Forum

there’s a stickie in that Forum called ‘Treating GERD w/ PPIS’ &

the ‘Prevacid 101’ post is down a bit, in purple (it can also be found from ‘Groupie Intro’ which is stickied in the Introduce yourself Forum)

[Anonymous]

Prevacid should not be given 1/2 hour after eating! My doctor did not tell me either. I learned here that it should be given on an empty stomach and followed up by a meal 30 minutes later.

The syringe never worked well with Myles either. I had better luck with a small medicine dropper ( the kind you get with infant’s tylenol or mylicon drops ). I used to dissolve the solutab with some water in a little medicine cup, then draw it up into the medicine dropper, place the dropper towards the back of the mouth inside the right cheek. While squirting the meds I would briskly move the dropper from right to left across the back of the tongue. This would prevent him from pushing it out with his tongue and also would disperse the medicine throughout the back of the mouth making it harder for him to spit it out.

[Anonymous]

I like that moving it around at the back of the tongue–I’ll have to try that!

[Anonymous]

Good luck. I hope it works as well for her as it did for Myles.

[Author]

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