Diagnosis Reflux

Last month was super hard, hard for so many reasons with routine amiss and Ollie returning to work but that was not the half of it. 

With my breastmilk taking a little longer than it should to come in, I spent the first few days after Jacobs birth topping up his feeds with a small amount of formula milk and as my milk increased I had a really hard slog but breastfeeding was increasing, although the breast bit was the problem, every time Jacob was on his front feeding he became fractious, it then increased to be every feed time he was screaming and then came the projectile vomit. 

I would spend hours feeding or should I say coaxing Jacob to feed only to have the whole lot come back every single time. 

We covered everything where he lay in extra sheets to make sure it easier to keep changing them as every single feed came back.

Our lives became a constant round of feeding, screaming, puking and changing clothes and I began to feel crushed by it all.

I cried …. a lot

I began expressing my milk so I could feed Jacob but instead of making things better it got worse, each day became a puke sodden nightmare and at the 6 week review with the Doctors we finally found out what the nightmare was we were living … 

Reflux

With a diagnosis I thought things would improve after being given baby Gaviscon but instead my little man continued to puke .. albeit a lesser amount and instead he became painfully constipated and was crying in agony and screaming in pain 3 days later. 

On a visit from the Health Visitor she suggested that we move our top up milk to Reflux milk, without Gaviscon and then only add the sachets of gaviscon to my breast milk. 

For just over a week we continued down this path and although the Reflux formula seems to work every time he fed on breast milk with Gaviscon he was screaming in pain again and so upset with constipation that we made the decision to stop breast milk with Gaviscon for a day or 2 to see if this made a difference and it did, in fact so much so I decided not to continue expressing milk as although breast milk is “always” better for baby, it’s not better when I am having to fill it with chemicals and watch him in agony. 

Since exclusively feeding him on Reflux formula he has been a totally different baby, he is finally contented after a feed, he is no longer being sick other than the odd bit of expected spit up and he is opening his bowls like he should be doing and his weight is going in the right direction. 

For me those weeks before and during the diagnosis it was horrific to watch him in pain and I know we are super lucky to have found a solution for Jacob even if that meant that I had to give up giving him my breast milk when that was one of my hopes throughout my pregnancy.

At the moment we are just enjoying getting to know our little boy and enjoying the time without puke to pain.