Ugh. Anyone tried both Neocate Jr and Elecare Jr?

Hi. I’m new to the boards. My baby is 5 months old. She has had silent reflux since she was a week old. She tried and got sick from every formula basically. We had her on a formula from Ireland that seemed to work for a few months, but at around 4 months, her reflux went berserk and she couldn’t handle formula well at all. She has always had minor facial rashes, flushing, and eczema on her face and diaper rash that never went away. That all got worse with any infant formula I tried her on that was made in the US.

She also coughed and sneezed all the time. She went from being a comfort feeder to a bottle refuser and she’s already small for her size as is.

She went from silent refluxing to full on vomiting.

Anyway, we took her to her GI who suggested that she had a DHA/ARA allergy as well as allergies to preservatives, so we kept her on the Irish formula, but she was still refusing bottles, still having terrible reflux and her facial rash and eczema seemed steady. We tried homemade goats milk formula, and that was worse. She was refluxing like crazy.

So we took her to an allergist who put her on Neocate Jr unflavored last week because everything was broken down and it contained no dha. we dilute it to the 20 calorie dilution. She did skin testing on her, but found no allergies. After putting her on Neocate Jr, she began to do much better, but no matter how much I thickened her feeds, she would still spit up a lot and seem like she was in pain. Her ped tripled her dose of omeprazole, but i’m not sure that’s helping her appetite.

Anyway, we ran out of neocate jr while waiting for Wic to okay her on the formula. They also said they needed to special order it since it was such a ‘weird situation.’ So we ended up buying a case of Elecare Jr unflavored because it was cheap on EBay just until we got the neocate jr. Her allergist ok’d it. She seems even better on the elecare and seems to spit up a lot less so far, but she’s only been on it a day.

So i guess my question now is what are your thoughts and experiences with both formulas? Can anyone tell me if this is too good to be true? I’d hate to annoy wic and the allergist again by asking for the elecare jr just to find out that she’s gone back to not wanting to eat much anymore.

Also, is there a difference between intolerances and allergies? Like medically? it seems like people use the terms milk/soy intolerance interchangeably with Milk Soy allergy. I’m just a bit confused since they tested her for 10 food allergies and she was negative for all of them, but still seemed like she was allergic to something.

nnpower2012-12-25 23:38:01