Cereal in bottle for reflux??

We are pretty sure my dd has reflux...she was on meds for it, didn't work, took her off them and she got better. Now we (dh and I) think she might have it again, if that makes sense? Sometimes she cries when she eats, other times she sucks it down (has never been one that throws up, just a lot of crying, but you stand her up and shes fine)...so anyways, i see several posts that say cereal in the bottle helps with reflux, so i might try it? would it be ok even if she doesn't have reflux - we spoon feed now. how much should i give and how often?

 

We are pretty sure my dd has reflux...she was on meds for it, didn't work, took her off them and she got better. Now we (dh and I) think she might have it again, if that makes sense? Sometimes she cries when she eats, other times she sucks it down (has never been one that throws up, just a lot of crying, but you stand her up and shes fine)...so anyways, i see several posts that say cereal in the bottle helps with reflux, so i might try it? would it be ok even if she doesn't have reflux - we spoon feed now. how much should i give and how often?

 

We put rice cereal in our girls bottles. Its supposed to help with the spit up by giving the formula some "weight" so it dosn't come up so easy. It dosn't help with the pain from reflux which is what it sounds like you are dealing with. I would talk to your pedi, maybe she needs more medicine?

 

We battled reflux for awhile as well. We switched to Enfamil AR that has rice starch added and it worked great. We took them off meds a couple weeks ago and they've been doing fine without it. Then a few days ago I noticed one of them started with the crying when eating, eating slower, back arching etc again. It looked like the reflux was back so I took him to the Ped and it turned out to be an ear infection and sinus infection, which can make them uncomfortable when eating. Since this sounds similar to your situation, maybe you should have them evaluated to rule out another problem before assuming the reflux is back? Just a thought!!

 

quote:
Originally posted by Rachel0980
We put rice cereal in our girls bottles. Its supposed to help with the spit up by giving the formula some "weight" so it dosn't come up so easy. It dosn't help with the pain from reflux which is what it sounds like you are dealing with. I would talk to your pedi, maybe she needs more medicine?


This is what I was going to say. We put cereal in our twins' bottles too, but to help with the spit up. For the pain I would recommend medicine. If it is reflux medication will help prevent long term damage.

 

quote:
We put cereal in our twins' bottles too, but to help with the spit up. For the pain I would recommend medicine. If it is reflux medication will help prevent long term damage.



We do too, but if she is arching and screaming, I would definately get her evaluated!

We add about 2 tsp per oz of formula.

 

Ditto previous posters - cereal won't help with the pain, but it does help them not get sick as much - we do 1 tsp per ounce of formula - but did it along with medication for a long time - only when they no longer arched or writhed during feeding and pain did we stop meds and just solely use the cereal in formula.