What can I feed her?

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone My name is Kay. I am the mother of a 2 year old little boy and a 11 month old girl and we are expecting our 3rd on June 11th. I was searching for websites about acid reflux in babies and found this site.

We just found out that my little girl Elly has acid reflux and our doctor told us only to feed her bland foods. Like crackers and bread…but since we started that on Friday she hasn’t wanted to eat at all!! It is a struggle even to get her to take her bottles and she just crys and crys. She is Miss Independant so doesn’t want me or my hubby to feed her at all but she won’t feed herself either. We have had to feed her chicken broth through a shringe and that is heartbreaking and she fought us the whole time. She constantly throws up and lately she has had really painful gas, and we are at a loss of what to do.

She was a great eater 2 weeks ago and would eat just about anything that we gave her (we didn’t give her anything that would trigger this though I don’t think) and had no problems at all then one day she just started having a really hard time. I mean she had more gas than my son when she was first born and she spit up sometimes but I just told myself that every baby is different. I took her to the ER on Friday because she was vomiting so badly but after a 3hr wait they told me to give her pedilyte…(thanks for the help doc)

Anyway to get to the point I was wondering if any of you had this spring up suddenly and if you had any tips on what we can feed her or that she could possibly feed herself that wouldn’t anger that little tummy.

Thank you and hope that you are all well.

Edited by kayquinn28 – Yesterday at 8:42pm

[hellbennt]

Hi & welcome!

I would think that she needs medication & then she can eat what she wants to- ok not ALL that she wants to, but I have never heard of a doctor saying oh she has acid reflux, eat bland foods!

how would HE feel if he had terrible reflux and then was told to just eat bland foods! Personally I would get another doctor, just based on this alone- also where was this doctor for the past 11months?

she is just now getting reflux? I don’t believe so.

I will help you & so will everyone else but I must get out the door – more later…

laura

[Anonymous]

that is one of the weirdest things i have ever heard a pediatrician say. i have severe reflux and no one has ever told me to only eat bland foods. my daughter sylvia had reflux so bad she required a fundoplication just before she turned 10 mmonths old—and the ped gi never told us to feed her only bland food.

if this has just come on suddenly—it might not even be reflux–it could be a viral or bacterial infection. i think if she had reflux, you would have known long ago. tell us a little more about your daughter and how it came about that your doctor just barely diagnosed reflux at 11 months old?

[Anonymous]

Thank you so much for your response

I thought the same thing about her needing meds for it; but since this is new to me I just trusted the doctor…whom I have already called three times today and they haven’t responded…My husband and I discussed the

whole bland food diet and we brought that up with the doc saying that how can she be getting enough to eat with just crackers and bread. She needs more than that just to have energy. Since I started that bland diet she has only been crying, vomiting, passing gas and sleeping…It didn’t and doesn’t make sense to us either.

We were told the same story that a lot of people have been about (babies cry and babies spit up) for the 11 months and we just accepted it until recently. You can tell the difference between a child crying in pain and being sick and a child being fussy. I wish that more doctors would not treat the parents like idiots.

I am not sure though if the doc can give her meds or if she will have to go to a specialist…Also very stupid question I guess but would the meds make her want to eat again? I mean she has to know now that pain comes with eating and maybe that is why she doesn’t want to…(I wouldn’t want to) but this is all so new to me and I am confused.

[Anonymous]

I take her to her regular well baby visits. I took her in on Thursday because she was vomiting and crying a lot.

Doc said she was healthy except she said that she has acid reflux. We moved to this area in April and that is when she started seeing this doctor. Before we were going to an Army hospital and when we told them about her spitting up they just said that babies spit up.

That is also what the current doc told us. She is a family practioner so I don’t even know if she can diagnose conditions like this. I know she gives my kids meds when they need them and that they get thier shots there.

[Anonymous]

sylvia was my 9th child—and i had only vaguely heard of reflux in infants. we had had other fussy babies—and she had had a bad delivery and was on oxygen for a month because she kept desating. we were told her lungs were underdeveloped because of the stress she had been under before birth–she had to be resuscitated after she was born. i later learned that reflux can cause them to desat. she cried so much that we had to hold her almost 24 hours a day for 2 months. she didn’t spit up much at first, but it got to be more and more over time. i had two different people mention reflux to me. i took her back into our family doc, and said, “this isn’t normal.” he said it wasn’t likely, but that she could have reflux.

he sent us to a pediatrician who gave her zantac–worthless, then a really low dose of prevacid—but after 12 days she actually slept for 4 hours.

the ped gi was 3 hours away, so i put off going until she was 6 months. when he saw how bad her test results were, he told me that it was all she had ever known. i could watch the mnonitor when she had her ph probe done. she would dip to acid levels and not even flinch—and she had an esophagus that was getting ulcerated.

i have voided PPIs myself for some stupid reason for so many years. i have taken them on and off. i am now paying for it with swallowing problems and chest pain—although now that i take my prevcid faithfully, i am seeing some improvement. i have a mild hiatal hernia, but i can’t bend over to even make my bed if there is something in my stomach—-without it coming back up.

[hellbennt]

research all you can here & discuss w/ your doctor. yes general practitioners they can prescribe meds & you might be lucky if your dr listens to you & your suggestions and prescribes meds. If not, time to look elsewhere, this sounds ridiculous…

At this point, I would want tests? But first there is something you can do, in the meantime, to see if it makes a difference-

I am NOT a DOCTOR I just have been on this board for seven (!) years now, so I know what other doctors are telling parents and I know what my son’s doctor told us…

so, that being said:

you can get mylanta over the counter and see if that helps. it’s like putting a band-aid on a gaping wound, but hey, it’s something.

look for the kind (it’s adult- there isn’t any children’s) that does not contain aluminum- many parents have found store-brand equivalents and not the actual mylanta cherry supreme- doesn’t matter- just look at the ingredients- you can give up to 2.5 over the curse of a day & if you see loose stools- just ‘back off’- anyway try this and then see if you can get some food into her…

if you can’t find mylanta, you can also try tums- try the quick dissolve- I think they even make children’s tums, but look at the ingredients, I think buying the adult gets you more for the money and they’re the same exact thing- again, you can buy the store-brand equivalent

you can ALSO get pepcid ac chewables (adult kind) and give THAT to her, too.

the dosing for pepcid is on this site- I’ll have to find you the link

again, NOT telling you to medicate your child w/o a doctor supervising, but letting you know what others have done (my own ped GI told me to give mylanta to my newborn and also told me to give tums when he was about 11 or 12 months old)…

you & your husband have to decide what’s best. if the mylanta and/or pepcid helps, well, then you can TELL the dr what you would like prescribed (after researching here, etc)

First and foremost, I think I would DEMAND a prescription for carafate.

If you get this, forget what I said about the otc mylanta/tums and pepcid…this is a medicine that is not a long-term solution at all. It is a ‘band-aid’ solution, but definitely helped my son at times. It’s like a teflon coating (it’s NOT teflon!) for the esophugus to help it heal- once it’s healed, he may eat better? It can’t hurt, that’s for sure!

[hellbennt]

christine (kevieb) wrote the following to another person who posted something kind of similar- her baby isn’t earting (much) & this is christine’s response:

kevieb wrote:

i would be for insisting on an endoscopy and a ph probe. my daughter only showed mild reflux on a barium swallow, too. her reflux was so bad that she was failure to thrive, anemic, refluxing almost 25% of the time and her esophagus was getting ulcerated at only 8 months. she had to have a fundoplication just before she turned 10 months old and they discovered a good sized hiatal hernia—it had never shown up during any test.

another thing to think about is esophageal thrush—and don’t let your pediatrician tell you that it is rare–it’s not. i’ve had two kids with it. anyone with a chronic condition—such as reflux, is more susceptible to it. my baby had had it in her mouth but you couldn’t see it any more–but she was refusing to eat and was chewing her food and spitting it out–she would only nurse. my older daughter never had it in her mouth—but she had reflux pretty bad.

i’m pretty sure i’ve had it in my esophagus also. i was on some pretty serious antibiotics for MRSA and got thrush. i’ve had it before, but had no idea how painful it could actually be in your mouth—and then the pain in my chest got really bad—worse than normal.(i have severe gerd, too). i have had to have my esophagus dilated 3 times. this last time, biopsies showed that i have alot of eosinophils–or allelrgic cells, as we have always referred to them on this board. i have done a little research and discovered it can cause trouble swallowing (that’s why i had to be dilated) and it can cause chest pain. it is usually cause by allergies to proteins. if your son had a scope, it would show if he had eosinophils—which would help answer your allergy questions. this is getting too long–but if you have any more questions, just ask—if i don’t get on here often enough—laura will find me for you. my daughter is 7 now. she was failure to thrive even after her fundo because she developed obstructive sleep apnea—and then an inguinal hernia to boot!! the kid was like swiss cheese inside!LOL! after she had her hernia repaired and her tonsils and adnoids removed just after she turned two–i am happy to say that she has hardly seen a doctor since—-but i sure was a rough couple of years for her and us.

[Anonymous]

Bland foods!!!!! REally!?!?

I agree with Laura and Christine’s advice. I also wonder if you tried something fairly recently in her diet to make it get worse. My dd’s reflux got worse when we introduced foods that we later realized she was allergic to. Unfortunately for us, she doesn’t react as soon as she eats the food. It takes her 2 or 3 days to react when she eats a food, so we never made the connection. This is a shot in the dark, but I thought that I’d throw it out there.

[Anonymous]

I took Elly to the doctor on Wed. They gave her a script for Ranitidine. They want to see if that helps her. If it doesn’t she will need to have some test done but I didn’t want to put her through that if this can help her. We will see *fingers crossed*

[hellbennt]

this is zantac. knowing your doctor, I hope it’s at the highest RX for her weight.

learn more here:

zantac: figure out the proper dose and TELL doctor (do not ASK). From this link, you can learn proper dose and HOW to ASK pharmacist about it. then, you can TELL dr.

don’t just take my word on this, read here:
https://www.infantreflux.org/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=8288&PN=1

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