Baby feeding advise please!

Cookie_monster_7

My 6 week old has reflux so has been started on gaviscon which is helping keep the feeds down but she is taking 5 oz every 3 hours (7 feeds in 24 hours) and always seems so uncomfy after feeds like she's overfilled her tummy. She moans and groans and arches her back. She's putting on a lb a week which is a fast weight gain I think. I'm wondering if she is taking in too much and just needs to suck. Should I maybe stop her at 4 oz and give her a dummy?

I'm mostly concerned that she always seems so bloated and uncomfortable after feeds, then we have to keep her upright for a while then she goes to sleep. When she wakes up its feeding time again. So unlike with my first I never lie her on the playmat to kick about in case she throws up all her feed. She's on sma first, but I've seen that cow and gate do a partially digested milk called comfort, does anyone know if thats any good?

I'm a bit confused about what to do for the best so any advise would be great, thank you x

pixelation

You are her mum so know her best. 5oz does sound like too much at one sitting, her tummy is very tiny at 6 weeks. It is possible that what she was bringing back up was the extra milk.
Most of the milks are very similar, so you can keep with the one you have, feed less and see how you feel in a week.
Good luck.

Becles

My babies were older when they went onto formula, but I found Aptamil was the best one.

It might be worth trying the small ready made cartons until you find a brand she settles with.

hitchins

When my little girl was a baby she suffered horrendously with colic, we tried everything, Coleif, Infacol etc, and none worked. We bought a tub of C&G Comfort and never looked back, made her poos even yuckier, but that was it. Worth a try. Good luck x

pigpen

I think SMA is too wet and watery anyway so wouldn't even use it.. we used aptamil which seemed to be so much better.. you may find if you simply change to another milk.. anything other than SMA has seemed fine with mine.. she won't want as much because it is more filling.

I've had 2 with reflux, one of which also had lactose intolerance so ended up on different milk anyway. The other we used aptamil and she took maybe 1-2oz less in a bottle BUT it stayed down better because she was not so bloated and she didn't dribble it as much either.. this also improved the weight gain as she was able to digest some and not be forever covered in regurgitated milk!

I kept mine upright for about half an hour after a feed so at least some could be digested! DS3 was so bad he slept in his bouncy chair/car seat because he could not be laid flat.. even tilting the cot was not enough.

skintchick

I will start off by saying I know nothing about reflux or about formula feeding, but when I read your post I wondered about feeding the same amount but spread out over more feeds. When my DD was that little, she fed every 1-2 hours. OK, she was breastfed which is different, but maybe feeding little and often might help? Just a thought which you are free to ignore considering I have no experience of your situation.

Fitzio

From the amount of threads on here on the subject of formula milk, I can only conclude that you should try different ones for yourself. Everyone has different recommendations on what worked for them, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will be suitable for your baby. Plenty of people get on fine with SMA.

My baby never had reflux and we used Aptimil from the start when breastfeeding failed. But she did suffer from colic and was a very messy feeder. She would regularly take a 5oz or 6oz bottle at that age, but she often spilled some of it too – I wondered if this was related to the fact she couldn’t latch for breastfeeding and maybe couldn’t suck the bottle properly either, but looking back, I think it was because she was comfort sucking and it eased her discomfort with wind – she wasn’t trying to drink the milk. I would try your baby with a dummy. I guess if she is still hungry, she won’t be long in spitting it out and demanding more milk. If you do decide to change milks, make sure you give it about a week to see if there is any difference though. Too much chopping and changing can be bad for their tummies too. But if she does want 5oz at one sitting, I wouldn’t worry about it - all babies are different.

whitewing

We used Aptamil from DD's first week. I later found out from the HV that the babies in hospital seem to find it easier to digest. DD pretty much follows the feeding patterns on the back of the carton for her age.

With DD, she would arch her back. She would do little burps after feeding, but it was only if we persisted with the winding until she gave a burp that would make a full grown man be proud that she seemed to get comfortable!

freebiequennie

I am a qualified childrens nurse and a maternity night nanny and would say if she is willing taking 5oz 3hrly stick with it, maybe try and extend to 4 hrly feeds over the next week or so by extending gap by 10mins each time.

Reflux is not a pleasant thing to experience as a parent as its hard to settle baby - if gaviscon is not effective go back and ask for further tests - ie see a community paediatrician - there are other medications that are fantastic for reflux but I am not allowed to give medical advice on these boards sorry

One tip is to place a towel folded in half under mattress at head end so cot/moses basket is slightly tilted (dont put it directly under her head).

Omnio comfort is not great for reflux babies in my experience. I would stick with SMA never had any isssues with it, a popular choice is hipp organic and apatamil but really all do the same job.

xmaslolly76

If she has been diagnosed with reflux then i would go back and see your doctor again i've never had the problem with any of mine but my friends two little lads suffered terrible with it i do know they gave her an addative thats made by cow & gate to put in their milk to thicken it up a little this seemed to help with the spitting up. it may be worth asking the question :-)

GPark

my ds had reflux, and we were given gaviscon after he only gained 13ozs in 11 weeks cos he vomited so much. Found the gaviscon to be a fab help, his first week on it, he gained 11 ozs, after that he settled down and was gaining 8 to 10 ozs per week.

I wouldn't recommend using comfort, as it is a thicker milk and gaviscon already thickens the milk, so your not supposed to use gaviscon with comfort.

Have you tried changing teat sizes? because the gaviscon thickens the milk its much slower coming out, and they have to suck more, so you lo could be taking in lots of air, I found that I needed to change to the next size teats once ds was on gaviscon.

Also, how long is each feed taking? Once you put the gaviscon into the bottle, its supposed to be used within a certain time frame, think its about 30 minutes, the milk gets thicker the longer its in there. If feeds are taking a long time then maybe she doesn't really need so much, and is sucking purely for comfort, in which case she could be taking in air (because the milk is so thick and she has to suck harder) and that may be making her bloated, so prehaps try giving her a dummy after say 4 ozs, and see if she settles, if she doesn't you can always give her the remainder of the bottle.

If you do decide to stop at 4ozs and try a dummy, remember that you still need to make up a 5oz bottle (assuming they haven't changed things in the 18 months since ds stopped taking it) because you used to need to use 4.5ozs of milk per sachet, but obviously thats impossible to make up, so you need to do 5 ozs.

good luck, hope you figure out a solution, I know how hard it is to have a little one with reflux.