What's working for me…

We’ve definitely had reflux, and tried the conservative recommended approaches. As I posted before, I was uncomfortable with starting meds yet because I really didn’t think my LO was experiencing pain. Yes, she’d get ticked, and she hated hiccups, but no real crying except in short spurts, with the exception of a day or two hear and there for 15-30 minutes, and that was never completely inconsolable. LOTS of spit up though.

She had only been sleeping for 2 hr stretches max at night, all on my chest because of the constant spit up. I bucked the trends and threw a blanket down on the living room floor and thought I’d try true co-sleeping, with her nursing at my side rather than picking her up. I had tried that before, but picking her up to burp always created lots of spit up. So how’d it go? I put her down on her belly (she’s accustomed to it as ANY back sleep before 90 minutes ends up a spit up mess) and she slept for 3 1/2 hrs and then I nursed her, actually while she was still lying on her belly. Gave her a few pats and got a small burp and we both went back to sleep. (One small spit up). 3 hrs later did the same routine and nursed from the other breast except this time she nursed on her side. A couple of small spit ups accompanying by small burps and we’re back to sleep. Same thing 3 hrs later, but I wasn’t adamant about the burping. If she fell asleep I let her be. Morning was FULL of smiles. Yes, we fought the sour tummy for a couple of hrs, but overall it was a good day. For most of the day I would lay down on the floor to nurse her and just leave her there to sleep. Same thing the next night. Sleep was a tad less but also MUCH less spit up. Know why? I didn’t burp her at all. Who’d have thought that would actually help. Sour tummy has improved. Gassiness is improving. And today, day 3, I have NO spit up on me at all, and no sour tummy!! She’s napping well and laying down on her own and hasn’t been fussy at all. Hiccups are fewer too. She actually has slept on her back a time or two. I’ll be happy to set the angel care monitor up so that she can return to her bassinet. Our bed is too soft for her. Training her to be “put to bed” again, even asleep, may be a challenge but that’s much simpler than what we’ve been dealing with.

Now it could be that she’s growing out of it but I don’t think so. I have no doubt I could “induce” the spit up and vomiting. I am really surprised though that not burping (or softly while she’s still in nursing position when I cradle her) has helped. I was fully expecting it to cause issues further on down the pipeline. I did see a couple of articles that stated that studies have shown that elevating doesn’t help and being fully upright actually causes more problem. That certainly seems to be the case here.

I should also say that I did take her to the chiropractor a couple of times. He did find issues with alignment and did minor adjustments, but honestly I had decided it’s likely a load of bull based on additional internet research.

And by the way, I started adding dairy back in about 5 days ago because I didn’t feel like she was having too much issue with that as far as the spitting up went.

Maybe it’s just luck, but I’ll take it for as long as I can!