Enfamil Ar baby formula

MatyMoo

A couple of things come to mind.

I was a very sickly baby and they stopped my Mum breast-feeding me and tried many formula's before they discovered that between meals I was given boiled water with sugar in it. It turned out that the sugar was the problem!

My sister used to projectile vomit, not just a little bit of sick, 4-6 feet across the room. Turned out she had something called pyloric stenosis. Just thought I would mention it so it can be ruled out.

Gillyx

Nicki wrote: »

Please don't undermine the OP's confidence in her GP at a time when she may need medical support. You may think the GP's actions were "insane" but they did in fact follow the NHS protocol for treating reflux to the letter, as he is required to do by NICE guidelines. If criticism is to be made, it is for the prescriptive nature of those guidelines which requires all doctors, whether GP or consultant, to try gaviscon, then Domperidome, then ranitidine in that order, before moving on to consider changing milks as a more expensive alternative.

OP - my baby had very severe reflux and was failure to thrive as a baby until the age of 6 months, including being hospitalised on more than one occasion. The NHS was hopeless and we ended up seeing a couple of top specialists privately more than once to resolve the issue, and we still tried that protocol first to see if it worked, because it does for many babies. Ours turned out to be caused by lactose intolerance and was resolved ultimately by stopping breast feeding and switching to neocate milk combined with early weaning on medical advice. Reflux isn't always easy to treat and resolve but rest assured your GP and your consultant have both done everything right, it just takes trial and error before you find the right approach, and what works for some won't work for others, or may make things worse.

My own opinion though is if there is no change in baby's symptoms after a week of trying something new, provided he hasn't got dehydrated in the meantime and is not in increased pain, you should go back for a change in approach, and sooner if you have concerns his situation has worsened.

After what I've been through with my doctors surgery (not my GP) and the treatment here in Northern Ireland, I feel I can speak freely. Especially when the pediatrician (who myself and the OP have seen) is basically telling him the same thing, the pediatrician was astounded when we showed him the videos of my LO, that we'd been back and forward to the surgery countless times and we'd been fobbed off. His actual words were "Gaviscon - Crap, Ranitidine - Crap, you have been fobbed off big time"

I understand there are guidelines to follow, but surely if it's projectile vomiting and not silent reflux, ranitidine isn't going to keep the milk down? On the occasion I saw the pedicatrician, he seemed to think that GP's when it comes to matters like this were in effect useless and he told us if we had any other problems not to even make an appointment with our surgery but just to ask for a straight referral to him, as he didn't want to be messing about. If that is the guidelines then we were offered things in the wrong order, we got Gaviscon > Ranitdine > Domperidone > Omeprazole.

Anyway OP I hope you get some help if you go back to see Dr Thompson, I found him really helpful, the first real help we actually had, as I'd been passed from pillar to post and labelled a "neurotic first time mother"

Edit: I wasn't undermining your GP and I do apologise if it came across that way, as your GP may be wonderful, mine sadly is not and still questions what the pediatrician has told her and told me to my face "I'm still not convinced it's reflux as he is gaining weight"

taxi36

Gillyx wrote: »

Edit: I wasn't undermining your GP and I do apologise if it came across that way, as your GP may be wonderful, mine sadly is not and still questions what the pediatrician has told her and told me to my face "I'm still not convinced it's reflux as he is gaining weight"

I am of the opinion that the GP wasnt exactly helpful either so dont worry , I know exactly what you mean.

Dr Thompson himself told my Daughter and wife that the baby had been "under treated" by our GP as the medicines he had prescribed for the problem were not actually ever going to help the problem!.

We are planning to ring the Royal again tomorrow to see if we can be seen sometime within the near future.

Its so hard to see the baby suffer like this.

PS to the poster who mentioned pyloric stenosis , the baby has already had a blood test to rule this out and Dr Thompson himself says that he is confident that this is not the cause for the sickness.

Personally I think maybe testing would be the next stage to rule out any allergies etc.

Thanks again to all who have posted. Its good to know that we are not suffering alone.

Nicki

OP don't know if you have come across this website but it is quite useful in terms of giving an overview of all the different treatment options, how they work, side effects, etc, along with other useful tips to minimise problems.

http://infantrefluxdisease.com/infant_acid_reflux/treating-infant-reflux-and-gerd.php

Good luck with resolving it. If the child is in extreme pain, as my DS was, it is very hard to live with while you find the ultimate solution. One tip which worked for us was to minimise the amount of time DS was in his carseat for as this exacerbated his problems a lot. We never used it as part of a travel system and were only able to take very short trips by car for the first several months as he just couldn't tolerate it.