Questions about adding cereal to bottle for reflux?

Have any of you had any experience with this? Our Ped recommended it to reduce the massive amounts of spit up. It just seems our little guys are pretty young. They are only 9 weeks old. How much cereal did you use per ounce? And what kind of nipple? We cut one ourselves and it was too big then I bought a Dr. Brown's and it was too big as well. It just seemed to choke the little guys.

Any insight would be appreciated.

 

We started out with a 1/2 teaspoon per every 2 ounces to get them used to it and gradually got it up to a teaspon per ounce. We used the Evenflow Comfi Curve bottles with the BRU brand (especially for baby)nipples. The small works with the 1/2 tsp per 1-2 ounces and the size medium nipples worked great w/more cereal. I tried every other nipple/bottle combo. This worked best for us. Plus the nipples that come with the Comfi Curve bottles leak like crazy. I also used Beechnut rice cereal because the Gerber seemed to clump up and clog the nipples. And when they started to eat baby food/table food, we weaned them off the cereal in the bottle. They only get it now, at 9 months, in their bedtime bottle. And its a 1/2 tsp per ounce.

It does help. But our girls were on meds, too. They still threw up, but not the amount they did w/o cereal.

Good luck. It will get better.

 

We use about a tsp per ounce. When we first started I put the rice into the food processor to make it finer. We use Avent bottles with the Variable flow nipples. It works great for us.

 

I did this early on for the same reason. As you can see, there is no magic formula to this and don't expect for the spit up to stop. This is simply to help alleviate the quantity of spit up and frequency. If it stops it, then that's an added bonus. Just feel it out with your babies and see what mixture works well enough. I found that over time, I was able to began to cut it back a little here and there. Just make sure that you get the right nipple. We went through so many. I finally ended up using a fast flow silicone nipple for a standard bottle. I think it was by Evenflo. I had also tried the tri-cut nipples and cross-cut nipples. The fast flow seemed to do the best but it really depends on how thick you are making your formula. Good luck!

 

My guys were started on it about that time as well. It is actually a common topic here in the FY. It does help, my guys had a lot less spit up when we started them on cereal.

 

the pediatric GI DR told us to use 1 TBS per 2 ounces of formula. We use Avent nipples and just cut a slit in the middle...

 

We're going through the same thing with one of our twins. Our doc told us to add 1 teaspoon of cereal per 2 ounces.

I'm experimenting with nipples and bottles too and haven't had much luck yet. I just bought playtex variable nipples and they didn't work. I cut a bigger hold in a Dr. Brown 3 nipple, but it makes a complete mess. She's not spitting up, but she's also dribbling so much down the front of her that she's still not ending up with a full feeding and I'm still doing the same amount of laundry!

 

I used Dr.Brown's size 3 nipples. I don't remember exactly how much I added, although, it was fairly thick. All of my babies have been refluxers and they all have had cereal in their bottles from about 2 weeks on.

 

My little ones were 6 wks early and the NICU put them on rice before they were even a wk old! They use 1 tsp per once of BM. After the nipples the NICU started to break down, we tried a couple different kind. The ones we like are the fast flow evenflo nipples. I prefere the silicone, but they do sell latex. miy boys just started Prilosec. I hope it starts to help soon! They are miserable!

 

We are doing the same thing and have been for about a week now. We started with a 1/2 teaspoon but worked on up to 2 teaspoons in a 4 oz bottle. We are using these generic walmart bottles, the nipples of which we carefully cross-cut with a knife. We tried literally every other nipple we could buy and this is the only one that worked for our babies. They are able to drink the full bottle with some, but minimal, spit-up.

oh, like a pp, we too are using the Beechnut cereal . . . HTH - good luck!