Worried about Gabriel, should i change milk?

Hiya All,

Our little man is on SMA Gold at the moment and we've been having real problems.

He's always brought up milk after his feed when being winded and often brings up milk about an hour or so after his feed too. He seems to gripe in pain and cry and it's often hard to bring any wind up at all.

We phoned MW on the labour ward (as advised) when he was 4 weeks old and she said to try infacol but under no circumstance to change his milk. We've tried infacol to no avail and HV came out yesterday and asked Dr to prescribe Infant Gaviscon - which they did. Yesterday went great with no sicky incidents but today it's back to normal and the poor little man has just had his biggest sicky episode to date which resulted in him choking because of the amount brought up. Then it was screams for an hour he was petrified and seemed to be in a lot of discomfort.

HV said if Gaviscon did not work to change his milk to Aptamil Easy Digest or Cow and Gate Comfort.

Any ideas / suggestions, experiences?? It's becoming really upsetting

B

xx

i had the same problem with izzy on sma gold the mw advised me to use it but izzy would drink an entire bottle and then bring half of it straight back up and someone i knew who had the same problem advised me to go onto cow & gate.

I got a couple of the cow & gate cartons and she drunk them fine with minimal sick and then tried her again with a bottle of sma and she brought it all back up so sma went straight in the bin and i went out and got a tub of cow & gate and never had a problem again with her being overly sick.

I had the same with Sophie even with breastfeeding. She was almost impossible to wind and used to 'posset' so much she lost half her feed almost - there's probably a thread here somewhere on it!

We had Infacol which didn't seem to do a thing. The doc then prescribed Infant Gaviscon which we had hell trying to give to her. Even when we did manage, it didn't seem to make any difference.

Sophie used to choke so much that her moses basket was propped up on its stand with a cushion and then I even had a towel under the mattress inside it too to get that propped up a bit more. She must have slept at 45 degrees of more

After much angst, we tried gripe water which she took happily and did the trick to a certain degree, but again, she was still not an easy baby to wind (Jasmine I had to barely touch her back and she'd burp all over the place).

When we started on SMA cartons, she was fine but she couldn't tolerate the powdered stuff (another thread around ). The HV suggested either C&G or Aptamil. She said they are made by the same company but C&G is slightly cheaper. I opted for Aptamil as a few other friends who've had babies are using it without incident. She's great on it and not a single problem.

I would say though, that it's only in about the last month to 6 weeks that Sophie has started to actually burp after her milk

I'm very confused why MW/HV are so adamant you can't change milks. Could anyone explain to me why it would be a problem at all? I can understand not changing to, say, Soya milk, but why would a different brand make any difference at all? They all adhere to standards do they not?

To be honest hun, if you're having so many problems, why not avoid the HV altogether, see the doc or just change to one of the gentler milks - they even make ones for very sensitive tummies. Probably worth a go.

Good luck

The reason not to change formula is because babies shouldn't be eating it, a baby is designed so that anything apart from breast milk is rejected, which is why formula fed babies are more likely to have reflux issues. So if you change milk and give the baby something foreign their body is likely to treat it as a pathogen, like they would solid food. This means the next time the baby comes in contact with the milk the body already has a store of antibodies, attacks the 'pathogen' and causes an allergic reaction.

I hear what Samuel is saying, except, as I said, Sophie had very bad reflux issues and she was BF so I don't really think that it has anything to do with the formula feeding. I think some babies are just prone to this kind of thing unfortunately.

Jasmine was also formula fed from 1 month old as I stopped expressing at that point as she wouldn't BF (being prem) and had no issues at all.

I think the best thing is to get some advice and get your milk changed hun as I have done with Sophie. She's had no adverse reaction to having her milk changed but she is a bit older of course. Hope you sort it out hun

I struggled with George, he was mix fed for the first 3 weeks and he was absolutely fine on SMA then, until I fed him totally on that. I had to use cow and gate comfort in the end.

I would have loved to have breast fed him, unfortunately he just wouldn't latch on and I could only express by hand, a pump just drew blood. When Martin went back to work, I just couldn't look after a 2yr old and a newborn and express, so I had to give in.

It pretty much sounds like Gabriel was like George, take him to the drs and see if they can help hun x

Charlotte was bottle fed from birth and she was fine on SMA but very constipated and struggled a lot with wind (we would literally wind her for over 30 mins) We used gripe water on her last feed every night and it worked a treat, she still struggles now and again with constipation though.