How To Deal With Infant Acid Reflux

For first time moms, infant acid reflux can be a big deal. After all, who would not worry when you see your baby drowning while spitting up milk? You might not even think of getting a burp cloth or a bib to wipe away that mess. A first time mom could even run her baby to the doctor for the fear of putting her baby to danger. Of course, seeing your baby vomiting after every feeding would really stress you out. Based from the studies made by the National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse, almost three-fourths of all infants experience acid reflux during the first to 11 months of their lives. This acid reflux usually happens during or after feeding sessions but you can also observe this if your baby cries or coughs.

The main symptom of infant acid reflux is spitting out. You can also observe your baby as being irritated when feeding. These symptoms would actually happen when the contents that should go to the babys stomach comes back to the esophagus. What happens here is that the muscles between your stomach and esophagus that should be closed tightly, opens up. These muscles need to mature first so that the food should remain down on the stomach and would not be spit out. Sometimes, acid reflux could also happen if your baby drink too much milk or your baby was fed so fast.

This disease is nothing to be worried about but then if acid reflux interferes with the growth or development of the baby, then it would be best if you consult the doctor. Some signs that would tell you that you need to have it checked by the doctor is when your baby stops gaining weight, the baby is spitting out brown or green liquid, does not want to be fed, has other symptoms such as fever, could not breathe comfortably and has diarrhea. In these cases, infant acid reflux shows that there is a serious condition that can lead to pyloric stenosis or GERD.

Most of the time infant acid reflux died out on its own. And if there is something that needs to be done, parents should just change the feeding strategy. You can opt to feed your baby often with smaller amounts of milk. You can also interrupt the feeding by letting your baby burp once in awhile. There are also some parents that change the brand of the milk and it is amazing to know that this really helps. You may also want to adjust the recline of the crib so that gravity would help keep the food in to the stomach. But if the case becomes serious than the usual, the doctor might then prescribe your baby medications that are used to heal heartburn. So the next time that you have a newborn and spits up, take the courage to take the necessary changes with the feeding and you would go away fine with infant acid reflux.