please tell me about dairy and reflux - MSPI?

[Melarina]

DS suffers from reflux. He's on Prevacid (for over a month) and we've tried lots of things, including Amby bed. Still very challenging for our sweet guy.

On the advice of a ped, I started cutting out dairy today. I'm curious about what connections others have found with this. Also, if you cut out dairy while bf-ing, what all did that include? I'm sure there are many other threads here on this so will do a search also. Thanks -- we hope that he won't have more nights like those recently where he is awake from 11 pm to 7 am with only one hour of sleep in there!

[jse107]

Hopefully Laura (hellbennt) will chime in here, but please check out infantreflux.org message boards. There's a whole section on MSPI. Both my kiddos were MSPI, and E is still if it's a large quantity.

It may take several weeks for the proteins to get out of his system, so don't despair if you don't get results right away.

[jenfromnj]

First, I am so sorry--for both you and your LO! We had this issue with my DS--he was dx with reflux after being awake like that all night a bunch of nights in a row. Was on Pepcid then Prevacid, which helped but only somewhat.

So I started cutting things out of my diet and saw a big improvement when I started to eliminate dairy, though it took probably 2 weeks to really help. It's tricky bc there are 'hidden' dairy ingredients in a lot of foods.

Kellymom has a good 'cheat sheet' that lists the common ingredients that indicate dairy in packaged foods:
http://kellymom.com/babyconcerns/food-sensitivity.html

I cut out the obvious things like milk, cheese, etc, but also various breads, chocolate, certain lunch meats, the decaf Starbucks drink I'd come to love, certain cereals. I eat a lot of grilled chicken/beef, beans, fruit and veggies and found some whole grain breads and cereals that are non-dairy--now that DS is over 6 months our ped said that I could start trying dairy-containing foods in small quantities (the sensitivity is said to diminish starting around that time), so at least it wasn't a super long time of eating like this (well, hopefully). Also, a good hint that a friend gave me is that anything marked Parve won't contain dairy--this was helpful to me because our local grocery store has a large Kosher section. The upside for me to the 'diet' was that it definitely helped me to lose the rest of my PG weight (I gained a ton while pregnant with DS!)

From what I've read, a lot of babies who are sensitive to dairy also have a soy sensitivity, but that wasn't the case for us.

Sorry this response became so long and random! This is a topic near and dear to my heart, please don't hesitate to PM me if you have any questions!

[BabyMine]

Infantreflux.org is wonderful. DS2 had reflux that was thought to be MSPI. Through that website I found marci-kids.com.

[hellbennt]

:wavey:laura, aka hellbennt here:)

there's a lot to say...it may or may not be (a reaction to a protein in) your breastmilk.
if poops are 'normal' mustardy/seedy breastfed baby poops (an occasional green stool is perfectly normal. just not all.the.time), then it may not be your diet.

it might be a protein in your breastmilk:
*if poops are mucousy (look curdled like cottage cheese or stringy, like the 'strings' on the inside of a banana) all the time (again, some mucous here and there is perfectly normal)
*if baby has frequent, foul-smelling gas
* if baby grunts and strains to poop and when s/he finally does it comes out soft

there's a lot more from my sig:)