My 5-month-old baby suffers from reflux and refuses bottles during the day
My son was diagnosed with reflux from 3 weeks old and is currently on infant Gaviscon. The trouble is, that no matter how hard I try and get him established on the CLB routine he refuses bottles, particularly in the morning. He eats really well during the night (he will have a bottle at 10.30 and another at 2.30am) but come the morning he won’t have anything until usually sometime during the afternoon. If he does manage to drink anything it will only be a couple of ounces at a time. I have tried giving him water during the night but his stomach rumbles so much where he is hungry that I usually resort to giving him a bottle but I do water the bottle down slightly so although he thinks he is getting a good feed (he is in fact only taking about 4 ounces of water with 2/3 scoops of powder). He sleeps really well during the night and goes to bed like a dream at 7pm (at the latest 7.30pm) and does drink his bottle really well before going to bed but because he won’t feed very well during the day his daytime naps are affected. I have tried a different formula and bigger teats. I have tried giving him solids instead of the bottle if he refuses it, with the hope that in his next feed he will drink really well but he just doesn’t. On a good day he will have about 24 oz (and that includes the night feeds). Any ideas? I am quite happy to do controlled crying but I do work evenings until 2am and have to get up again at 6.30am to take my daughter to school (she is nearly 5 years old). So I would rather try and get him to feed better during the day so he goes through the night on his own, which I know he can do because I have forgotten to feed him at 10.30pm before and he managed to go through until 1.30am (which is 7 and a half hours).
He weighs about 16lbs. He feeds at 7am 2ozs, 11am 4ozs, 2.30pm 3ozs, 6.00pm 6ozs, 10.30pm 7ozs, 2.30am 5ozs. He takes 1teaspoon of rice or 1 cube of fruit at 7am and 1tsp of rice with 1 cube veg or fruit at 6pm.
He naps from 9-9.50am, 12.30-2.30pm and 4.30-4.45pm. He is settled at 7pm.
To get your son to take more of his milk by day and less at night you will have to eliminate the middle of the night feed slowly. Continue to water it down. Keep making up the same amount but decrease the powder every few nights until it is just 1 scoop to 4 ozs of water. The effect of this may be an earlier waking in the morning through hunger in which case you must feed him. You may need then to offer him a small top up feed at 7/7.30am to get him back on track for his 11am feed. Once he has taken the very dilute feed for a couple of nights, try to settle him with just water. This may take time and if you can get help from your partner with this it should mean you will be more able to cope in the day. Don’t give in and go back to feeding him when he first wakes; if you are consistent and persistent you should be able to see some improvement in his daytime intake within a few days.
Until he is beginning to take a better feed at 7am you could try offering this in two parts. Give him 2oz on waking and offer him a further 2-3oz around 7.45am. Offer him his next feed at 11am followed by his solids. At this age his solid food is not intended to replace his milk completely. Until he is feeding better by day it may help to give him his milk feed at 11am and then his solids at 11.40am. This will help gradually increase the solids without dropping his milk intake too much yet. On your notes your son started solids at 4 months. He is now just five months and does not seem to have increased the amounts by very much. Look at Gina’s weaning guide to see how to introduce a variety of fruit and vegetables and also how to balance the intake so your baby receives the right amounts at the right times of day.
Once you have seen an increase in his daytime intake you may find he begins to cut back on his 10.30pm feed. Until he is better established on solids and has increased the amounts he is taking, keep this feed in place even if it drops to only 2ozs. It is better to feed him a small amount then than have him return to waking in the night again through hunger.