Hellobee Boards

It took me months to realize DS had silent reflux and the final sign I read or heard was that he would seem congested (stuffy nose) as the night went on but not be stuffy at all during the day.

The signs for me were: constant moving while sleeping, never seemed comfortable, would make lots of grunting and angry noises while sleeping, would wake up screaming, short cat naps, no long stretches of sleep, up every 2-3 hours... he didn't spit up often but when he did it was explosive.

Since he didn't spit up much we didn't think it was reflux until I started putting more of the pieces together and the congestion thing really made me realize. As soon as I took him in and told the ped all of it together they prescribed him meds and we did see a difference pretty quickly. Still not the greatest sleeper but we were able to get longer stretches at night!!

I had two reflux babies who presented really differently and also were different sleepers. In general, I think medication can help sleep because it can help them eat better/more efficiently during the day (especially if you are seeing feeding refusal/fussiness, which I did with both of my kids to varying degrees), thus needing fewer overnight feeds. However, reflux won't help bad habits of nursing to sleep or other sleep associations.

DS had silent reflux and his main symptom was refusing feedings/being miserable during eating. Prilosec helped immensely and we sleep trained him right at 4mo. He quickly dropped to one MOTN feeding which he kept until ~8 mo. DD was an epic, epic puker - I had to change my clothes (including underwear!) multiple times a day, fed on a towel, etc - and she was a good sleeper from the start. She ended up medicated for reflux bc she started refusing feedings, not bc of her spit up. Even at the height of her spit up, she stayed on her curve (70th-80th percentile for weight/90th or so for height). We didn't have to do as much sleep training with her bc we put her down drowsy but awake basically from the start. She also kept one MOTN feeding until about 7/8 months.

so I would say at 6.5 months, if she isn't refusing feeds during the day and feeding reasonably well (ignoring spit up bc it always looks like more than it is - she is still probably getting a ton, especially if she is a fast/efficient eater), I wouldn't medicate. I would focus on getting in good feedings during the day as much as you can and having a consistent Ferber approach. I personally am fine with a single overnight feed for a while, but I think more than one feeding between 7p and like 5/6a is really not necessary at that age (or in my experience with a sample size of 2 reflux babies - including one bottle refuser).

@bhbee: I don't know on the co-sleeping, I guess it could be a number of things. But maybe if they're feeling uncomfortable from reflux, a comforting presence helps. Basically it worked great for LO until he was mobile enough to attempt to climb over me to get to the other boob. Then I'd had enough He never took > 4 oz bottles at once, but would take a lot of them. Tanking up before bed didn't actually work for us, because then he'd just pee a lot and I think the soaked diaper actually made him more likely to wake up.... but i know it works for some people. He's always been a heavy night wetter.

When we've tried elevating the crib mattress, lo managed to just turn himself around and end up with the head down rather than up. but again i know it helps some people...