My daughter had severe reflux from day one. She suffered from silent and not so silent reflux. When she was suffering from a silent reflux episode, you could hear something coming up but she wasn’t physically sick. She was screaming and looked to be in so much pain. It really did break my heart.
There were a few things that I used to help my daughter. The one very useful thing was her highchair. I bought a highchair suitable for newborns, it was the only place she was happy to sleep in for months. Every night I put her in her moses basket/cot and even with it raised she would sleep for a couple of hours and then about 1-2am she would wake up screaming and not go down again. So I went downstairs and put her in her highchair and almost instantly she went to sleep. Because she wasn’t flat, she wasn’t sick as much. She often suffered from trapped wind so it sometimes wasn’t the instant solution that I longed for. Sleeping in a highchair isn’t the best place for a baby to sleep but I tried without it and she didn’t sleep at all. Plus with me getting up every night, I needed sleep too and that was the only way.
The doctors didn’t believe there was a problem as she was never sick in front of them. She was always sick in the waiting room. I took her to hospital at least twice as she got so ill towards the end and again it was the case of her being sick in the waiting room. She saw a paediatrician and he prescribed her some anti-reflux drugs but they didn’t work. When my daughter was almost six months old, I finally got a referral to see the paediatrician who instantly said yes it sounds like reflux and she changed her medication. She did say that it could be all down to a cows milk intolerance but to try the medication first. I spent the rest of the day thinking about whether it could be a cows milk intolerance and then realised that this was what had been wrong with my daughter all along! I used to breastfeed my daughter and had to stop because she lost weight (due to her being sick all the time. I had a lot of dairy in my diet, well they do say that whatever you eat and drink can pass through to the milk..maybe it was something to do with milk full stop.
So I contacted the paediatrician who prescribed me a milk designed for babies with cows milk intolerance. What a different child! The sickness soon stopped and she started to thrive!
My daughter is now a healthy two year old that enjoys life and I am pleased to say that she can now have milk (cows milk intolerance tends to improve by the time a child is three and I didn’t stop giving her small amounts of dairy and have increased it recently and she seems fine).
I found this website a life saver especially when trying to convince doctors that my daughter had reflux http://www.babyreflux.co.uk
