General Reflux Question

Specialties PICU

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Specializes in Looking for a career in NICU.

I'm a pre-nursing student but have more of a "Mom" question.

I have a slew of friends who have had babies in the last year, and for some reason a huge percentage of them, not very long after the baby's birth, their kids were on meds for reflux.

Because we are friends, I mentioned that my own daughter was misdiagnosed with reflux, and it was being caused by the Avent bottles (WHICH I HATE!) that allowed too much air to get in her tummy and caused an air bubble, milk got on top of the bubble, the bubble came back up, so it looked like reflux, but wasn't reflux. I told them I switched to the Dr. Brown's bottles and the problem stopped immediately. Didn't know if it was the case with their kid, but worth a try.

Every single one of my friends, with the exception of one, the "reflux" went away totally with the change in bottles, and they said they had never heard of the Dr. Brown's bottles before I mentioned them. It also pretty much made spit-ups a rare instead of an every-feeding occurrance.

My question is this: Why are doctors so willing to drug-up kids FIRST without trying other things? This is just really suprising to me.

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, PCVICU and peds oncology.

Why? Because it's a quick and easy way of getting the kid and the mom out of the office. It's the same reason that so many kids get antibiotics for viral illnesses. True reflux is unmistakable. One doesn't need to see the formula or breast milk to know it's happening. The child will seem to be holding his breath or panting, and will be pale or slightly cyanotic. Sometimes they sort of droop due to the vagal stimulation of the refluxing fluid causing bradycardia. Conservative treatment is to place the baby on his right side when sleeping to have the esophageal sphincter above the fluid level (stomach curves to the left) with the head of the mattress elevated a little bit. They don't need to be sitting up, unlike our intubated and ventilated patients now that the VAP police are out in force. Some of the popular reflux meds have been take off the market due to safety concerns. When I worked in Manitoba there were a lot of kids on prokinetics; here in Alberta, they're very rare. So if your friends are finding that changing the design of their bottles has worked then it's all good!

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Specializes in Looking for a career in NICU.

Thank you so much for such an informative post.

I guess it was just the way I was raised, I was never a "pill popper". I will put up with a huge amount of pain from my migraines, before I take my strong meds. I have a fear of developing a tolerance to them and having them not work.

I'm not that extreme with my daughter, but I am very careful about how much meds she gets. If she is running a low-grade fever, I just let it go, because I feel...I need to see if it spikes, b/c if she does run a high fever, then she probably needs to go see a doctor vs something less serious that will take you days to figure out b/c she was kept on Tylonal.

I mean, I'm not even formally in the nursing program yet, but with all of the information available on the internet and the news, and yup, even health programs, how can people be so ill-informed?

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reflux seems to be 'en vogue' right now. yes, there is a difference between wet burps and true reflux. my kids had no problems, thankfully, but i do see it in the nursery. :barf01:

if there really is a true surge in cases, any speculations on the cause?

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Specializes in Looking for a career in NICU.
reflux seems to be 'en vogue' right now. yes, there is a difference between wet burps and true reflux. my kids had no problems, thankfully, but i do see it in the nursery. :barf01:

if there really is a true surge in cases, any speculations on the cause?

well, my daughter was under 5 lbs when i brought her home from the hospital. so, as you can imagine, her feedings were small and being a few cc's short was a big deal for her. i received several of the wide mouthed avent bottles as a gift, as they are very popular.

what i am suspecting is that the wide mouth and angle of the feeding to prevent a brady, doesn't allow the nipple to stay full and therefore, the baby is swallowing a ton of air on top of it.

this is how bad it got: here she is on a 3 hour feeding schedule, and 1 1/2 ounces would take me almost an hour to give her, only for her to spit most of it up and sit there screaming. then her bowel movements started to decrease, and after a day of gas drops didn't work (which they advised me of by phone), i rushed her in and that is when i learned of the dr. brown's bottles. dr. brown's also has a premie flow nipple, b/c the flow of the smallest avent nipple was too fast and she would choke easily.

so most of my friends register for the avents, but i always get them one dr. brown's bottle, just in case, and tell them my story, so that if they have a major problem in the middle of the night, they would have it onhand.

my poor baby, was so hungry...her first feeding with the dr. brown's bottle was less than 10 minutes, and spit-up was very rare for her, and she was happy.

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