My baby is struggling to drink milk - recommendations for dr Post Reply

[pie81]

Ah, so glad you saw Geraldine and you now know there is a cause ie the PTT.

Of course it's possible there is also allergy or reflux going on (by the way allergy and reflux are often linked, about a third to a half of babies with reflux have got dairy allergy) but get the tie sorted first, see if things improve, and then you will know whether there is something else as well.

If/when you do get the tie cut, be aware it can take a few days for improvement to show, as the baby has to relearn their technique with their newly freed tongue. So just because there isn't instant improvement, don't assume there must be another problem - give it a few days.

[Hattie]

When I have played all my cards, I will always Geraldine Miskin in to see my clients when the babies have problems feeding and she has been amazing. I'm sure she will have recommended a tongue-tie specialist. I recently went to see Mr Haddad, Consultant Paediatric Surgeon at the Cromwell Hospital. He sorted out a posterior tongue-tie in my current baby and he is feeding like a dream now. I've never heard of mothers being told to "water down milk because it is too rich." Has anyone else on here!??

[astro]

We're going through the same thing right now so I can relate! Like youour problems started at 6 weeks... feeding a little and then crying, back arching etc, I felt like I was poisoning him with breastmilk! We too saw a lactation consultant who suggested silent reflux.

Our GP has been quite good and we're now on ranitidine, plus I've been off dairy for a month now. I also realised I'd been trying to force him to feed to a schedule (i.e. I'm breastfeeding so complete what i 'thought' was a full feed every 3 hrs or so) and as my GP said, it is important that feeding isn't a battlefield. So... I now put him down when he comes off if he's unhappy and try again later, which means i feed him more often during the day (a bit more demand feeding). The most useful thing I've found however is standing up to feed and walking or rocking.... its not terribly sustainable as he gets heavier but at the moment it is the only thing that works to keep him on.

He's 15 weeks now and he still is a terribly fussy feeder but at least he is happy between feeds and sleeps well. I'm still hoping to see an improvement though as I won''t be able to carry him for another 2 months of this!

[LKNorthcote]

Hi there, I am very sorry to hear of your baby's discomfort, poor little thing.

I just have a question to all - explosive poos are mentioned a lot on here. My son is 8 weeks old and always has explosive poos - a few a day. He has a proper session where he has to really concentrate and will go several times each time. However, he feeds well and apart from the usual wind seems okay. Are explosive poos not normal in new borns?

[pie81]

LKNorthcote I don't think explosive poos on their own are a problem if he is happy, for some babies that's just how they get the wind out . If there are other symptoms like being unhappy during/after feeds (like astro's son) or uncomfortable when sleeping (like the original post describes) then I'd look into possible causes.

Further to my previous posts, we had our daughter's tongue tie cut by Graham I Smith at Kingston Hospital. Private appt so very quick to be seen and only £80 which is much less than some other surgeons charge. He will also assess lip ties and cut if severe (but that is rare). Just in case this info helps the original poster or anyone else.

[Oeuf]

Our first had tongue tie, which was sorted very capably by Graham Smith at Kingston and our second had silent reflux and behaved EXACTLY as you have described. I was lucky enough to have an excellent GP who was immediately onto it as soon as I took him into her and prescribed him Lansoprazole, which sorted out the problem. I also took him to a paediatrician for added comfort though - the excellent Dr Shah at Great Ormond Street who specialises in children's gastrointestinal problems. I agree with a previous poster that Dr Fysh is also wonderful and sees a lot of reflux babies but he is more of a general than a specialist paediatric. I really hope you get the problem solved soon - it's so heart-breaking seeing your little one in pain like that and quite soul-destroying when you are in that first 3-months slog too. Word to the wise ... If it does turn out to be reflux, the meds take a little while to settle down and kick in fully and it seems that they stop working temporarily following jabs as well (this is anecdotal but I experienced it with mine having thought it was just tittle tattle - the effect was about 1 week after the jabs and is only very brief). Good luck!

[LizzieTheNappy]

My son had horrible colic and vommed constantly. When he was 8 months I discovered through advice from a forum that he was dairy intolerant. I stopped eating anything dairy (it goes into breastmilk) and hey presto, within 2 days he was a happy child. I felt dreadful that the poor thing had been in agony for so long quite unnecessarily so when I had my next baby I cut dairy out straight away and had none of the problems that we'd had with my first. I then had a little try of dairy when he was a few weeks old and he started refluxing everywhere straight away so clearly not eating it had made his early days much easier.

Apparently it is very common in small babies and they grow out of it within a few weeks to 2 years or so - it's not lactose intolerance but casein, the protein in dairy so goats milk has it too.

Of course it may not be the silver bullet it was for us but I think definitely definitely worth a try not eating any dairy for a week and see if it makes a difference. It is hard at first because so many ready made things sneak it in - salt and vinegar crisps, Hellmans lite - and even the teeniest teeniest bit that I ate seemed to upset him. But if it works it is so worth the effort. (I had full fat mayo instead of butter on bread and oat milk on cereal and it was bearable. And I also lost loads of weight as an added bonus!)

Good luck - I really hope you sort it out.

[windmill26]

Nanny Goat Milk Nutrition Formula worked for us. It is more expensive than other formula milk but for us was worth every penny!

[Balhammum44]

Hi
All above advice very good. Breast feeding problems are a minefield but there are some great experts out there often in the private sector and it can be well worth paying, as per above posters experience
I am a local gp and clearly watering down breast milk is a ridiculous suggestion. I'm not impressed. Agree tongue tie often a factor but can be a red herring. Colic, reflux and cows milk protein allergy overlap with their symptoms so it can be difficult to discern which is responsible but we now know that the latter is much more common than was once realised. What you need is a systematic plan for eliminating the causes ensuring that you do one thing at a time (although that's easier said than done because babies seem to fluctuate/change a lot!)
For what it's worth my baby pulled off the breast and screamed so much from 3months old that I had to give up and it was devastating at the time. Retrospectively I should have got more help. He turned out to have undiagnosed ear infections which took me another year to work out and this might well have been the cause. Or not?!!
So definitely see another gp or two until you are satisfied that you have a reasonable plan.
Good luck
BM

[LKNorthcote]

Thanks Pie81 - I feel reassured!

It is very interesting reading this thread as my first child, now nearly 4, had many of the above symptoms which were dismissed by the GP and HV. I wish I had pursued further as he must have been in such pain!

Good luck everyone.

x

[delighteddad]

hi

we had similar problems with our daughter (not so much the poos + vommitting - but v fussy feeding, struggling to get anywhere near the required amount of milk into her, had to abandon breast but bottle not much improvement, arching back, uncomfortable, crying during each feed, bad sleeping) and it was a very stressful time. Starting about week 3 and lasting until about 7 months

we tried tongue tie cutting (same woman as mentioned earlier actually and it did help with breast feeding for first two weeks), changing formula, changing bottles, constant burping, infacol, ranitidine and omeprazole, weaning early and various visits to gp, paediatricians and a dietician.

nothing really worked. She eventually just outgrew the problem and now loves milk (even though she's supposed to be cutting right back now as a healthy 18month old - typical )

I think she probably did have some bit of silent reflux to begin with and maybe we wasted time messing around with the 'lite' meds like infacol etc and missed it which created a problem. Very hard to say.

But the big 'lesson' was that it was our first child and we were so worried that we mistook a lot of her tiredness for hunger and her personality (feisty - never liked being held) for discomfort. We tried too hard to keep up to the scheudled levels of mls per feed/per day and got stressed when she wanted less (which was most of the time). We tried to keep to a schedule of feeding but then when one or two were missed/bad feeds we increased the number to make up for that so that we ended up with 15 feeds per day of which maybe 5 were 'successful'.

Also, which is obvious now but was impossible to tell at the time, our daughter has a mind of her own from early days and didnt enjoy being held flat and having anything stuck in her face to feed. she wanted to control things before she was physically able (although she effectively achieved that anyway). and she got a bit emotional when over tired or over hungry so feeding became v difficult and we just kept making it worse

it was much better when (i) we started feeding her in her bouncer (so she felt more relaxed (in front of tv sometimes against all advice im sure)) and (ii) we starting weaning her (as she enjoyed food more and also we were sure she was having some more important calories etc)

but all in all she outgrew it and zero residual side effects. I really regret all the extra stress and worry we heaped on ourselves and it made the first 6 months miserable when it need not have been. So not sure if that helps anyone but just wanted to say that it is often darkest before the dawn and try to to stress too much.