Gaviscon Infant

Lily has always been a sickly baby. I don't mean that she throws up entire feeds (although I know some mums whose children do just that), rather she has always tended to deposit a little of her feed when being burped or indeed sometimes randomly hours after feeding. My husband and I noticed that she was also getting distressed at nighttime and would often start really crying as bedtime approached.

I knew that the combination of posseting and night time crying was an indication of reflux and the doctor agreed. Initially we thought we would give Gripe water a go. My mother swore by the stuff when we were little. Unfortunately Lily didn't take to it and in fact it seemed to make her sicker!! We also tried Infacol and Detinox but neither of these seemed to help the symptoms either. When we had seemingly exhausted all other possibilities, the doctor suggested giving Gaviscon Infant a go. Basically you empty a sachet into the baby's milk which is a lot easier than having to try and give baby medicine before, during or after a feed with a syringe (believe me!!) and depending on the extent of the problem it is okay to add a sachet every feed.

Gaviscon did seem to do the trick. Lily was less grizzly and although she was still being posseting a little, it did seem to be less. There was one major drawback though. The poor wee thing ended up constipated. To begin with it was what I would describe as 'rabbit poo pellets' and it was obvious from the red faces Lily was pulling that passing such stools was less than comfortable. The more Gaviscon she had the worse the constipation became and eventually it seemed we had swapped one problem for another because now Lily was getting distressed at not being able to go. We reduced the amount of sachets to see if this would help but the constipation continued and so in the end thought the reflux was the lesser of two evils and stopped giving her Gaviscon altogether.

If the relux had been worse we obviously would have persevered but the older she has got the less it has been a problem. She is still prone to 'giving me some of her feed back' (as I affectionately put it) but it doesn't distress her and as long as I have a muslin to hand then it's really not a problem. I always ensure that I feed Lily in an upright position – now made even easier as she will sit in a highchair – and give her a good winding at the end. Nine times out of ten we will get a lovely unladylike burp. If nothing comes up then we know it will either come out the other end (Lily does like to do machine gun farting!!) or expect a little bit of sick at some point!