Baby Reflux - True Story...
When my husband and I brought our second child, Aidan home from the hospital, we felt a great sense of calm. He was our second so diaper changes and nights without sleeping were not foreign to us. We felt relief knowing that we had thoroughly discussed beforehand all of the possible problems and issues we might face. We thought we were prepared for anything and everything.
Two days after Aidan came home, I decided to give him a sponge bath. As I lowered his head and rinsed his hair, he started to vomit. I became so nervous because he was only a few days old. He was born in January so I was hoping he wasn’t coming down with the flu.
My husband tried to calm me down so I went on with my day thinking this would be an isolated incident. It wasn’t. He proceeded to vomit after a few nursing sessions. We called the pediatrician and he had us come in for an appointment. After giving Aidan a thorough examination, he told us he suspected he had reflux.
He said it was common in babies. Baby reflux is caused by an immature esophageal sphincter. In babies with reflux, the sphincter is too loose causing it to open and allow stomach fluid to creep back up into the esophagus. The good news is that most times as the child gets older (usually closer to a year old), their gastrointestinal tracts are more mature and they grow out of this condition.
Per the recommendation of our pediatrician, we took Aidan to a GI specialist who did an abdominal ultrasound on him. Most times babies are diagnosed with reflux just by symptoms. However, it’s a good idea to rule out other conditions which cause severe vomiting like pyloric stenosis. Thankfully Aidan’s ultrasound was negative.
The doctor gave us a prescription for Zantac and Prevacid. After a few weeks on the medicine, we really didn’t notice much of a difference in him. His symptoms seemed to progress even more. Aidan was still vomiting and spitting up a lot as well as having episodes of severe gas pains and crying. Finally after months of us pushing our doctor for more help, we decided on our own to start giving Aidan a few spoonfuls of rice cereal at each feeding as well as some other things to help stop baby reflux symptoms.
I made sure to keep him elevated when sleeping and not to put him to sleep until 30 minutes after a feeding. If I were to pick one thing that helped Aidan the most, I would say it was the rice cereal. Due to his severe vomiting, he wasn’t gaining enough weight. The rice cereal not only helped with the reflux but it also added extra calories. Once he started the rice cereal and then moved on to other cereals, he started to gain the appropriate amount of weight and we were finally able to relax and enjoy him. We were so focused on the problems for the first 6 months of his life.
It was a tough first year but we got through it. There were days where all I did was clean vomit and do laundry. Transitioning to solid foods was also difficult because Aidan had problems with some of the chunkier textures. Eventually, he began to eat and hold down everything that we fed him. Now he’s almost two and doing well. Those days filled with a crying, ill child seem far behind us. |
