This is for someone else, lol.

This person has an infant with DGE and cannot take rice cereal in the bottle. He is asking me about Thick It and if it is digested easier and okay to use with DGE. I assume that it is not, but wanted to ask the DGE experts before I reply.

Thanks. :)

I honestly have no experience with thick it so I can not answer that question for you. Iain has DGE and we used cereal to thicken his bottles and it was a disaster for us. Mind you he was also 14 months old when we were told to do that but he refluxed like mad when we did. :blob6:

How old is the child? Is he on DGE meds? Was DGE confirmed? Not all kids take well to the thickening so I would ask if he was on reflux meds as well and what they were.

Hi, I am the person mirra was posting for. My son is 4 months old, history of pyloric stenosis, severe GERD,and DGE since pyloromyotomy. He is on Prevacid, Reglan, Levsin (for abdominal cramping) and milk of mag. He was initially put on Periactin, but had adverse reaction (excitement, inability to sleep, etc.). He will take the first bottle with rice in it, but every bottle after that he screams and cries through. He was diagnosed with DGE by a GI in March. I really don't know what to do for it.

It sounds like your poor wee fella has had more than his fair share of it already! :(

Again, I have no experience with thick it and the cereal did not work for us at all, in fact it made things worse likely because Iain was not intaking well at all during that time.

Since you have so much else going on I am sure that someone with experience will be better suited to answer your questions as you need someone who has "been there and done that". As it is a long weekend it may be a day or so for replies but I know we have members here who will be able to help you. If you do not get replies please pm me and I will find someone who can help you, ok?

Just a wave and a welcome to Donsmom :) I'm sorry I could not answer you completely. I would THINK the Thick It would notbe any better but as I said, I'm not too familiar with DGE. I hope someone can answerit for you. :D

I would like to say hi and welcome to the board. I am so sorry that your little one has had to deal with so much in such a short time. We used thickit but my son was older at the time and didnt have dge. I do know that it will make the formula heavier and with dge that is not a good thing.

My oldest son has severe dge and we have found the lighter the food the better but I do know that it can be difficult for a younger child. I have a guestion does your son spit up a lot? Is he in Pain alot? Will he not eat regularly? Why are you using the rice in the bottle?

I was wondering this because alot of time kids with dge will vomit because their stomach arent empty and to full. The vomitting is not always associated with reflux but with the dge.


Melanie

Melanie made great points. I am sorry you are dealing with this, and would love to see the answers to Melanie's questions. Just my input--anything like that made my son worse. We didnt try Thick it because our GI said all those thickening agents make DGE worse, which in turn would make the reflux worse. But he did horrible on all the cereals and when we concentrated the formula to make it higher in calories--that too was a disaster. Anything that makes it harder to digest can make DGE worse.

What formula is he on? My son was BF for 7 months and the after trying a nestle good start, then nutramigen, he ended up on Neocate. It is the easiest to digest and out of all of them he drinks the most of this one. I found that for him, the milk based was the slowest digesting but he doesnt tolerate milk.

Thanks for all the info. My son is on nutramigen. he does have severe reflux and spits up quite a bit. he should be starting solids soon, and I was wondering if that would be a problem for him.

Have you considered that maybe he does not tolerate the nutramigen either? A small percentage of babies dont do well on the hypoallergenic formulas as they still have a small percentage of milk in it. Sometimes they will improve on an elemental formula like neocate. It is very expensive and prescription only. It was hard for us to get but once we did, it was worth it. Our insurance actually pays for it and we end up only paying 13 dollars a can--cheaper than regular formula in the store and it gets shipped to our door each month!

It has helped Gavin a lot.

Does the reglan seem to help? What I would say about the Thick it after knowing more info about him is this: I think you should try it, if you think he needs it. If it doesnt work or makes him worse, then you go back to not thickening. If it works and he tolerates it, then great. I think it is really the only way you will ever know.

Evan has DGE too. His dietitian had us try a product similar to Thick It. It made his vomiting worse, as does anything with a thicken texture for him.