Hi
I just joined this wonderful site. My 5 1/2 month old daughter has reflux and delayed gastric emptying- she is on reglan, erythromycin, pepcid and prevacid. She doesn't vomit very often- just 1 per day so she seems to have more of the silent reflux. She had a pH probe and gasric emptying study to diagnose the problems. She is still having alot of problems with eating. I was going to try thickening with oatmeal but i was worried this would delay her emptying even more. Does anyone know it thickening will worsen the emptying? Do you need to thicken for silent reflux?
thanks, Karie mom to Sarah 5 1/2 months SGA, DGE,GERD, now FTT

Yes it can delay emptying, not to say that it will, just that it can. Also, yes thickening is just as important with silent reflux.

Unfortunately, the only way to know if it will help with your child is to try it since they are all so different.

Best of luck and welcome to the boards.

Welcome! My youngest is a silent refluxer and we were told to thicken his feeds. Unfortunately it made things worse reflux wise, but he was 14 months old at the time and just starting medications so our situation may be unique. You will see plenty of "either way" situations here as Roni mentioned.

Is your daughter a silent refluxer?

She is not completely silent- She vomits abot once a day so not to the extent of other kids. She does all the ohter stuff- arching, crying, bottle refusal, coughing , gagging, hiccups. I guess I am scared to try the thickening because she has stopped gaining weight and I don't want her to have a bad day. But I guess I won't know unless I try the thickening.
Karie- Mom to Sarah-SGA, GERD, DGE

Unfortunately, you will not know unless you try. We gave it a go for about a week and they suggest using it for at least two weeks. Is she FTT? It is scary when you do not want to lose even one meal with them. Things will get better in time, you just have to find the magic combo. :wink:

Let us know how it goes.

She was born very small 3 pounds 14 ounces. She has been gaining slowly- she is now 11 pounds 6 ounces at 5 1/2 months but these past 3 weeks she has not gained any weight. So now she is below the 3 rd percentile. It is scary because they are now talking about a pyloroplasty, nissen and G tube.
Karie mom to Sarh 5/12 months SGA, DGE, GERD

THat is scary indeed. I have not read your intro yet :oops: , but I am thinking she was a preemie maybe? If so, are you using a preemie chart instead? That makes a huge difference.

Post any questions you have about those surgeries on the other boards to get great information. I have no clue about them and thank my lucky stars we do not have them to consider.

{{{hugs}}}

She was actually 36 1/2 weeks - they took her out because she wasn't growing. We have no idea why she didn't grow well inside.

Are you using a preemie chart, Karie? I am hunting one up for the board as we seem to have lost the link for the one we had.

There are so many reasons for intrauterine growth stalls, but often I find they do not figure it out. Some friends have had that and ended up with preemies, one was born nearly 4 months early as a result. He was the tiniest kiddo I ever saw growing up and now as a teenager (man, that makes me feel OLD! :lol: ) he is pretty much caught up and average size. Certainly, he has no development issues and has not for many years.

Hi,
sorry I was at the beach for the weekend, but wanted to add that I think it could make it worse. Our son had serious emptying problems and thicker the scarier, Yuck! You will get mixed info from docs if your child had GERD and Delayed emptying problems, that is when treatments start getting confusing.

Thickening can make it worse, but you do have to see what works for you. I have heard people say thickening makes it worse. Our doctor warned us against even trying it, so I never even tried to thicken Aidan's formula. Aidan refluxes both ways. He regurgitates and also vomites a lot!!!