My LO is 4 months old and has been dealing with reflux since he was about 2 weeks old. Until recently he was a "happy spitter." But the last 2 weeks, he all of a sudden started becoming irritable during some nursing sessions, arching his back, flailing his head side-to-side, high-pitched screaming, and generally appearing to be in pain. On the other hand, some feeds are fine and he is still generally content most of the day. But his sleep has been TERRIBLE, including virtually no naps, more MOTN wake-ups and taking 1-2 hours to go back to sleep, the whole time doing the back-arching and head side-to-side thing.

We took him to his pedi yesterday, who is pretty against using antacids because they suppress the purpose of acid which is to keep out bacteria, viruses, etc and thus increases the risk of illness. Despite us telling him that our son is getting VERY little sleep (a total of 7-9 hours per 24-hour period) and is obviously in pain, his recommendation was just to wait it out since it will get better as he gets older. He also said it could be teething pain (??), and that we could try Tylenol and see if it helps. He wrote us a script for Zantac and told us to weigh the pros and cons and we could get it filled if we wanted to. He told us that when it works that it works fairly quickly (just like when we take OTC antacids for heartburn).

Well, we decided to get the Zantac and he got his first dose last night. In addition, I held him upright after he ate for 30 minutes (through major screamfests, but he eventually calmed down). He then slept a 5.5-hr stretch and a 5-hr stretch, which was a MIRACLE.

Was it the Zantac that helped? Was it keeping him upright for 30 minutes? I previously held him upright only for about 10 minutes. Of course I was stupid to try 2 "new" things last night.

Has anyone else gone through something similar?

Did anyone notice that your LO got sick more often while on Zantac? I'm going to feel like the worst mother ever if he gets sick now. I'm considering dropping the Zantac and seeing if holding him upright after MOTN feeds is good enough, but DH wanted to stick with the Zantac for at least a week.