Challenging moments with your children part 2

When the twins were born they were six weeks early and M weighed just 2lb 11ozs so she was pretty tiny. While they were in hospital initially they were mostly tube fed to try and fatten them up, but eventually they were moved to bottle feeds. Looking back now I can remember M on occasions not feeding that well whereas R would usually finish her feed quickly. I thought nothing of it though, but the signs of silent reflux were probably there then.

Eventually after six weeks they came home and very quickly after feeding M on quite a regular basis would just spontaneously vomit up her feed or simply refused to feed. This was incredibly frustrating because sometimes it would take an hour to get just 4ozs of milk inside her. It was very hard and massively frustrating and something that my wife just didn’t understand why it was happening.

We both decided to take her the doctors because our instinct was telling us it was not right. 

So we went along to the doctor and they diagnosed silent reflux. My immediate reaction was what is that?

Silent reflux is a very challenging condition. The sight of a bottle of milk would result in M getting upset. Unlike normal reflux which results in a baby bringing up most or all their milk back up again, silent reflux is just as painful, if not more.

It’s like indigestion, but you don’t vomit every time. Acid is brought up to the throat from the stomach causing a burning, uncomfortable feeling and it can quite often be very painful. Babies can be seen to pull their legs up to their chests in awful pain.

The doctor we saw prescribed Gaviscon which was to be added to her milk. This without question helped to start with, but it seemed to wear off quickly and the silent reflux started to return. It was also making her constipated. On her nighttime feed sometimes I would end up walking around the room bouncing her up and down to drink her milk and quite often M just refused to drink. Some nights we were lucky to get couple of ounces inside her and she would be impossible to settle. 

The time had come for another visit to the doctor because my wife and myself were frustrated and worried that she wasn’t getting enough milk. We went to the doctors and explained the situation and to be honest the doctor we saw was brilliant. He immediately prescribed a medicine called Ranitidine which was to be added to her milk. He also suggested that we continued with the gaviscon, but at a lower dose. Within just a few days their was a huge improvement in M finishing her feeds and sleeping better.

This was a very tough and challenging and very emotional time for my wife and myself mostly because you know your baby is not happy. She is pain and simply can’t tell you what is wrong and there was times where we quite simply didn’t know what to do. Our concern was that if she was not feeding she would lose weight and not grow as she should. Thankfully we saw a doctor that got things just right and made us and our baby happy.