Prevacid

[Anonymous]

So after countless attempts at meds and formulas the doctor suggested a Nissen today :(. I do not want this but I so not want my poor baby to be miserable anymore!! I am losing hope :(. Help!!

[hellbennt]

has there been a scope done a ph probe? Those tests would come next…

ps: when you get a chance, please go to the top of this page, click on Settings and please then click on Edit Profile, then scroll down to

Signature & put:

baby (name if you want or nickname), age (can put month & yr of birth), meds, doses & forms of meds, breastfed or formula fed

thanks

[Anonymous]

Both have been done! The scope showed mild inflammation and the dr said the ph study showed mild reflux episodes. So why is he refusing to eat?? I don’t understand 🙁

[hellbennt]

it’s because he now associates eating with pain 🙁

have any of the feeding aversion posts been helpful?

[Anonymous]

Any clue to why the meds aren’t working for him?

[Anonymous]

i’d be for doing a little more checking on things–mild reflux and mild inflammation aren’t really good reasons for doing a fundo. Neither one of those would be causing a tremendous amount of pain when eating. there could be other reasons for not eating. how long ago was his scope done? my daughter developed esophageal thrush and refused to eat, she would only nurse. once she was given an appropriate dose of diflucan for an appropriate amount of time, she started eating, sleeping, and gaining weight.

how old is your baby, how is his weight, how is his sleep?

It doesn’t sound like the meds aren’t necessarily working for him, it seems that in the past there have been alot of babies that still had some mild inflammation even on meds. is his dose high enough? what type of medication is he on, what kind of formula is he on.

My daughter had to have a nissen fundoplication just before she turned 10 months old—but, she had severe reflux. her ph probe and scope, done at 8 months old showed that she was refluxing almost 25% of the time, overall. she was refluxing almost 29% of the time when she was upright—so much for holding them upright after feeds!!!. she had 97 bepisodes of reflux during the ph probe, and a number of them were considered prolonged episodes–lasting 7 minutes or longer. the longest episode lasted 44 minutes, duiring the night, while she was asleep—and she slept right through it. her esophagus was getting ulcerated, and she was failure to thrive. she would eat for me, though it was often seemed like a wrestling match while she was nursing—but then she would throw so much of it back up (and i would nurse her again, etc., etc.) that she could not gain enough weight. when they did her surgery, it turned out that she had a pretty good sized hiatal hernia that had never shown itself during her scope or during two barium swallows. I don’t think she even weighed 17 lbs when she turned a year old. she continued to be failure to thrive until she was 2 years old. she developed obstructive sleep apnea and that can cause failure to thrive, since they produce most of their growth hormone during the deepest stages of sleep—and with obstructive sleep apnes, they constantly wake them selves slightly because of their struggle to breath, so they don’t get good sleep.

when we first saw the ped ENT, sylvia had never had a sore throat, and had only had one ear infection–yet her tonsils were huge. she actually had one sore throat before she had her surgery, which was done a week after she turned 2—-she weighed 22 lbs. they removed her tonsils and adenoids, and also repaired an inguinal hernia she had developed by that time—but that runs in our family—i’ve had 5 kids with inguinal hernias—two of them had double hernias. they are more common in boys, my husband had one as a child, but i had 4 girls and only one boy with the inguinal hernias. the Ent told me that when sylvia went to sleep, her tonsils were touching and that they were full of debris.

she has done very well since she had her last surgery at 2. she is now almost 8 1/2 years old. she can burp, but she can not throw up. when she gets nauseated, she spits into a bowl and i give her carbonated pop and crackers to try and help the nausea. (it helps when i’m nauseated)

ask you dr for a copy of the report from your son’s scope and ph probe, but also make sure and ask them for a copy of the graph of the ph probe. you have to make sure and ask for the graph specifically, or all they will give you is a copy of the doc s interpretation of it. i just thought it was really interesting to look at the graph because it shows the results in a way that is easy to understand–because you can actually see when the acid levels rose and fell.

a fundo is pretty major surgery and is usually reserved for pretty severe cases. My daughter had a lap fundo—and it was a 3 1/2 hour surgery. she only has 5 tiny little scars that you have to look for to even see them. she also did not have any of the complications that you hear are possible after a fundo.

it just seems to me that if your sons tests showed everything as mild, that there may be something else going on that needs to be addressed and a fundo seems a little drastic at this point.

a little more info about age, meds, weight, formula, etc. would be helpful.

[Anonymous]

i am a little confused–you said that on monday the doc was going to schedule your son for a ph probe and a scope—-you said that yesterday the doc suggested a fundo—how did you manage to get a scope and ph probe scheduled and done and the results back in 3 days? Yesterday was 3 days from when the doc suggested the tests, and i have a hard time believeing a responsible doctor would suggest such a drastic surgery withour having the results back.

what day were the tests done? what were the results of the biopsies? they can’t tell you anything by what they see with the naked eye. our ped gi came out after sylvia’s scope and said things looked pretty good—but that was before he got the biopsy report and the ph probe results—which told a whole different story.

I have watched a scope before. our ped gi let me stay in during one of my other children’s scopes, and you really cannot tell much just by looking during the scope, of course, i’m not a doctor, but he explained things to me while he did the scope—i was standing right next to him and holding my daughter’s hands to keep her from trying to put them up to her face while she was out.

[Anonymous]

Ok I am going to give lots of information in this post! :). Ok so my LO is 5 and a half months. He has had problems eating since birth and I was nursing at first but that went downhill! He was on enfamil AR for a while and truthfully he didn’t really vomit a whole lot but screamed 90 percent of the day so we switched him to a hypoallergenic formula. We went to allimentum RTF ! His pedi had put him on zantac at this time which did not help at all! So we went to prevacid once a day which also seemed to do nothing!

[Anonymous]

Sorry didn’t finish !! After the screaming continued we went to see a ped GI and he said to continue the allimentum and go to prevacid twice a day. He still continued to scream and the vomiting was not that bad. All though somedays he did vomit never projectile tho! GI scheduled a scope at this tome LO was 3 months said it showed mild inflammation nothing to worry about continue prevacid and allimentum. LO was still eating well and still screaming all day! Fast forward to now ! He’s 5 and a half months and started refusing bottles over the past two weeks ! They added bethenocal and carafate to his med list none of which seemed to help.. So he was admitted Wednesday for a ph study and endoscopy! He took his bottles fine during the study but continued to cry all day! I took him home and he refused to take bottles for the last two days! Today he had a total of 12 ounces of formula. He screams when he even sees the bottle! I called his GI and he said he looked at his ph study and it showed mild reflux but he didn’t know what else to do and if he continues to refuse to eat we should consider surgery!

[Anonymous]

mild reflux is definitely NOT a good reason to do a fundo—plus–this doc has not even seen any results from your son’s biopsies yet. my daughter refused to eat when she had esophageal thrush. she would turn her head away from the spoon, or she would chew food and spit it out instead of swallowing it. the only thing she would do was nurse.

it is also possible that your son could have eosinophils—i have eosinophils–enough that it could possibly be eosinophilic esophagitis–i just haven’t followed through with a Gi yet. eosinophils can cause chest pain and difficulty in swallowing. esophageal thrush can be very painful. i had MRSA 3 years ago and was on some pretty nasty antibiotics—-i had no idea how painful oral thrush could be (i had even had it before) i did not realize how painful esophageal thrush could make swallowing.

since you do not know your son’s biopsy report yet—both of these conditions could still be a possibility.

this doctor sounds a bit too surgery happy—that is a pretty serious surgery to do for only mild reflux and has the possibility of causing worse side effects than what you are dealing with now.

your son only has mild relux, so it is highly unlikely that his biopsies are going to show severe reflux esophagitis–it sounds like his medications for reflux ARE working.

I am thinking that you are dealing with some other sort of issue instead of reflux. unless this doctor comes back with some biopsy report of severe reflux esophagitis—-i would run away from him as fast as your feet can carry your little one away. do NOT let him do such a drastic surgery for such a mild condition.

take your son to a pediatric ENT and check out his tonsils, adenoids, ears, eustacian tubes, etc. he could be having a problem in these areas that could be making him not want to eat. it you come up with nothing there—you may just have an extremely fussy baby. You may need to take him to a speech pathologist for feeding therapy.

if he is screaming 90% of the time, he may just be swallowing so much air that he is giving himself horrible stomach aches and creating a self-perpetuating problem.

there are just so many possibilities that could still be explored and i would definitely explore them instead of doing a surgery that it does not sound like your son should even be considered for. his weight is good, he is not aspirating, he is not vomiting, he only has mild reflux—-only an extremely irresponsible doctor would suggest a fundoplication because a baby is screaming and refusing to eat and has no real signs of reflux problems. he should be referring you to some different types of specialists to check the numerous other possibilities.

I know a screaming baby can be difficult—my 3rd child cried for 2 years.

kevieb2012-03-02 22:33:03

[Anonymous]

Thank you for all your suggestions!! My poor miserable baby 🙁 I know something is going on with him but no one can figure it out!!! He acts like he doesn’t want to suck, like it hurts ;(! I will call his pediatrician as he may have some suggestions too

[Anonymous]

Ok one more thing I wanted to add…. To try and figure out this little mistery baby of mine! He will reach for a cup and does like to drink from a cup but after a few sips at that he will start screaming also and quits

[Anonymous]

good idea to call the ped—i would explore every possibility there is. it really does not sound like this is a reflux issue—relux may be an irritating problem connected to whatever else is going on, but it does not sound like it is the main issue. i think the surgery would be a really bad move and i would not even leave it on the list of considerations, if it were me—and my child has had the surgery, but she was REALLY severe. there have been very few babies on this board that have ever had to have the surgery done. sylvia is only one of a handful in the 8 years that i have participated on this board.

i remember when i first joined the board, sylvia was my 9th baby, and i had had other fussy babies, she was just worse than the others. i remember reading the other mothers’ posts and thinking that sylvia was not nearly as bad as the babies i was reading about, when in fact, she was far worse. i think the difference was that most of the moms were young and dealing with a first or second baby—-i was 40 and i had 9 children–i’d seen and dealt with alot over the years. i remember telling our ped gi that i probably sounded so insensitive when people would say how nervous they were when their baby had to have an upper gi—i’d be thinking, you’ve got to be kidding, your baby is going to swallow some white stuff and they’re going to take some x-rays—he told me that no, i wasn’t insensitive, i’d just had a lot of kids.

I have actually had to lay myself across a 4 year old to help hold him down for stitches, while he yelled at everyone to get off him and get off his legs—all the while i am trying to keep from laughing at my child because he was so mad at being held down. the nurse told me they could get someone else if it was bothering me, but the doctor knew better and said, “I think moms alright.” i wonder if he could see that i was trying to keep from laughing.

when my girls had been diagnosed with celiac and we had one of them in seattle children’s hospital with an eating disorder, we took the other two in for a blood draw to test their Ttg levels—-and it was the blood draw from hell. my 5th grader threw the biggest fit i think i have ever seen. i swear she had 12 arms and legs with 20 fingers on every hand and prehensile toes. we would pry one hand off and another would grab onto something else and she must have been screaming–i probably blocked some of it from my memory it was so awful–but hilarious when we look back. people were sticking their heads out of doors to see what was going on. finally, my older daughter and i both were holding her down on the floor–i think maybe someone else was helping, and the poor, flustered tech finally drew her blood, and we let her up. then she walked over and kicked my older daughter in the shin. i went upstairs to get something from the pediatric floor that we had left when we had gone to seattle. when i got back down, the tech came out and said that she was sorry, but they did not get enough blood—and we had to go draw my daughter’s blood again!!! i figured she deserved it after the fit she had thrown. this made me laugh again just to type it. i guarantee you, things are going to get better and some of these things that seem so awful now will be really funny when you look back.

kevieb2012-03-02 23:46:54

[Anonymous]

I sure hope you are right!!! I started feeding him some solids yesterday to see if he would eat them and he sure enough did! 🙂 i amdoing everything I can to keep him out of the hospital! Although as a mom and a nurse I still know something is wrong and I think you are right and some other things should be considered! There has to be a reason for all this screaming and refusing to eat! I plan on calling his pediatrician on Monday! He does not sleep well either tho. Naps are limited 20 minutes at most. There have been days when he does not sleep at all! I like hearing your stories they make me smile! Right now I am so down and depressed it is good to hear them! Did medications ever help your daughter? Was she in a lot of pain? Or was it the throwing up that cause her FTT or did she refuse bottles as well??

[hellbennt]

Christine always makes me smile!

I don’t want to sound like a broken record- oh wait, we don’t have those anymore, how about a skipping CD, but is the prevacid a good dose? I don’t have the time to go through the five (5) pages…

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