2 year old self-gagging to vomit.

My almost 3 year old daughter (with global developmental delays) has been on both Zantac and Prilosec to control her silent reflux. One of the symptoms that crops up when we need to increase her dosage is that she’ll stick her entire hand in her mouth in attempt to make herself throw up. This usually happens when she gets upset about something and she’ll start to cry. The crying quickly escalates to what we call a “reflux episode” where she’ll start to get extremely mucousy and then start to cough/gag. Then she’ll stick her hand down her throat to try to throw up (and sometimes she’s successful). If we try stopping her, she will get extremely aggressive by hitting and/or biting us. Eventually she’ll calm down (either by distraction) or she’ll exhaust herself to sleep.

She did have an EGD done and that came back normal. We were unable to do a pH probe because her nasal cavities are too narrow to get the probe through. Both her GI doc and her pediatrician seem to think this is more behavioral and thinks we should just let our daughter throw up. We’ve tried that, but she doesn’t stop – she keeps sticking her hand down her throat and throwing up over and over. So, we don’t let her throw up, if we can help it. An increase in her reflux meds usually helps. Wish she can tell us what’s wrong (she has speech delays).

Anyone else’s kiddos self-gag to induce vomiting?

Cindy