Baby Acid Reflux

When we brought Magnolia home from the hospital we were in for a big shock. She cried [for what seemed like] all the time. And she did not sleep for more than an hour at a time. I shared my postpartum story here, about those first several weeks at home. When she was about five weeks old I started to see signs of silent acid reflux. I think her symptoms were present the whole time, I just didn't really know what I was looking for at first. She didn't spit up much, but she was gagging, choking, and hiccuping. She would make a painful face and then swallow, as if she was spitting up and then she'd just swallow it. Her cry was hoarse! It was very hard to watch our baby suffer.

I remember doing Google searches in the middle of the night. I was desperate to figure out what was wrong with my baby. Of course I made an appointment with her peditrician, as well. Being a new mom I wanted to understand what was going on before her appointment so I turned to the internet and mommy groups!


After taking her to her doctor he agreed it sounded like she had silent acid reflux. He told me to try over-the-counter probiotics before discussing pharmaceutical drugs like Zyrtec. He said studies show that they are just as effective as medication. She's exclusively breastfed and I asked about changing my diet. He said that I didn't need to make any changes to what I was eating and that she would most likely grow out of it soon. Kelly Mom is my go-to source for breastfeeding information. I found this article about reflux to be helpful.

The probiotics worked! Honestly I was a little hesitant at first, I really thought we would need a drug. Each morning I would simply put one drop on my nipple before nursing, that was all. After about a week we started to see an improvement. We started off using the Gerber Soothe Probiotics then ended up switching to the Mommy Bliss Probiotic + Vitamin D Drops after we finished the Gerber drops. The price was the same except we got more with the Mommy Bliss brand and the Vitamin D was an added bonus. One less drop for us each day!

In case you're a mommy or daddy awake in the middle of the night desperately reading about acid reflux, I thought I would share our positive experience with probiotics. Of course talk to your peditrician if you suspect acid reflux and hopefully it'll be an easy remedy like it was for us. I know how very hard it is to go on for weeks without sleep while wondering if you'll ever sleep again. To see your beautiful child uncomfortable is the hardest!

In addition to the probiotic drops I also held her in an upright position for about 20 minutes after nursing and we had her sleeping in a Rock-N-Play for several weeks. We found that the inclined position helped. As soon as we felt confident that we were past the reflux issues we moved her back to sleeping flat on her back. We also found that the Halo Sleepsacks were great for night time swaddling. We are still using this white noise machine and we cannot give it enough praise! Next month we are going on our first trip out of town and we plan to take her white noise machine.


Please let me know if you have any questions about our experience with silent acid reflux! It's tough, I know.

XO

Below are the products we found to be very helpful.