Crying it out and Reflux, need help!

[Anonymous]

Hi to all. I have a question for anyone. My 4 month old has reflux. She is on prevacid split up and given 3 x a day. She was sleeping through the night about 2 weeks ago for 3-4days straight. I then introduced cereal in her bottle to help with the reflux and that threw her all out of control. I have stopped the cereal which she only had for about 3 days. She is still waking in the middle of the night screaming like crazy. I was told by my ped to give her 20min and if she has not calmed down feed her. And then hopefully each night she will cry less and then within 3-4 nights she will sleep through the night again. Well, it is not working. She is getting enough formula during the day and is gaining weight just fine. Her reflux does seem to wake her at night, I think unless she is in a grove of being fed at 3am. I want to let her cry it out for longer than 20 min. but don’t know if that will work if it is her reflux bothering her. My ped said if she is eating and going back to sleep without any pain or crying then it is not her reflux at night it is her wanting to eat. I am just a wimp when it comes to her crying but I think I might have to bit the bullet and do it for a few nights. Any thoughts or suggestions would be great.

[hellbennt]

until you get the reflux under control at night, there is not much you can do

I would split the prevacid dose ‘unevenly’ and give the higher dose/portion in the evening & see if that helps

also if you have any zantac around (or pepcid or axid or tagament) you can give that, too- just give 4hrs seperate from the prevacid.

once the reflux is under control, then you can go in and have your husband offer some water in a bottle. if baby sips it and then conks out you will know it’s not hunger…that’s what we did. once there was no pain! and I say husband, bcse these babies know that they don’t ‘mess around’ LOL! also I was breastfeeding so there was no way I could go in there and baby wouldn’t expect/demand milk!

but first things first. check the reflux.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the info. But how do I know if it is her reflux that is waking her in the middle of the night or if she is just in a grove and used to being fed at around the same time each night?

The ped thinks it is not reflux at night that is bothering due o the fact that she will eat and go right back to sleep with no problem until morning?

Any thoughts?

Thanks again!

[Anonymous]

Is she only waking once at night? If so then that could be completly normal. She might even be going through a growth spurt. Too often we expect babies to sleep through the night when there just not ready. Actually it sounds like your baby is sleeping through the night. Medically speaking 5 hrs of straight sleep is sleeping through the night. I know it’s hard because everyone around you asks if she’s sleeping through the night, but most babies just don’t for awhile. It could always be habit and if so like Laura said if you give her some water she will go back to sleep. If it’s really hunger then she will demand formula. I know you probably don’t feel this way, but you are one lucky mama if she’s only waking once a night. Justice woke up every hour until he was 10 months old. I think most of us moms on here have babies that wake very frequently during the night. I even did a poll on it at one point.

[Anonymous]

I will say that my lo had a middle of the night bottle until he was 10 months old. If you aren’t sure if it is reflux related, then I would not let her cry b/c if it is reflux related that will only make things worse. What I did was I gradually decreased the amount my lo was eating at night until we were at 4oz 1x/night. Then he eventually just stopped waking to eat and finally around 13 months started sleeping through the night. Not Ideal I know but that was him and even with reflux meds and his reflux controlled he was a poor sleeper until he was about a year old. HTH.

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