Actually, there is some more to my story...and a story it is, I will try to keep it short on YOUR behalf!!! We tried the Zantac, Reglan and Maloxx; then Prevacid, which is the one that worked the best. The reglan can cause irritability (which he was VERY fussy), the zantac we were giving 3 times a day, and my specialist said we could keep him on the zantac and prevacid and see how it goes or up the dose of his prevacid, and that's what we chose, prevacid 2x/day.
He had a very hard time with latching when I tried nursing, and when he took a bottle, we had a hard time trying to find one where he was not sucking in air around the sides of the nipples (we tried big, small, funny shaped...you name it we have it in our cabinet!!). Finally I just said the Dr. Brown was the one where he pulled in less air.
So, knowing he had acid reflux, we knew he was going to be fussy, and spitty...they put him on Beech Nut Rice cereal...my ped. told me to make it look like a frap (I called it sludge)
. It was a TBSP of rice cereal to one ounce of formula...I wouldn't take it (i'm not even going to say drink it, because you weren't). So going back and forth like 3x/week, I felt like I lived there....he said it was colic...oh, they did check for piloric stenosis, and they said that was borderline.
His crying, air around the bottle, and yummy bottle made him VERY gassy....I ended up bringing him to a pediatric gastroenterologist (my 3 year old son went to him when he had acid reflux). Right away they did an ultrasound, which was
basically normal, and the barium swallow and found that he had a gastric volvulus, which is a "flipped stomach" most likely due to all the air in his intestines pushing upwards; making the bottom of his stomach twist upwards, so now it is the top, his food go north and all that acid go north...I felt so bad for him.
The doctor put him on Elecare, which is formula specific for intestinal problems...and within 4 days he was like a different baby; even the slightest change was better than what it was...people still thought he was bad, but compared to before and after, he was good enough for me.
So this formula is not specific for the reflux per say, but it has the broken down proteins that will help with that.
That is what I can tell you in a nut shell without giving you all the horror...so I think that is why I am having such a hard time with trying to lengthen his time and wanting to push more formula. But I really would like him to be on a more consistent plane. But I never thought about the empty calorie thing...but once he takes straight formula, it starts coming out around the nipple everytime he sucks and he gulps it, even if I switch to a different flow nipple. I don't know, I am at a loss....
