THE BABY FEEDING SERIES WITH RAW CHILDHOOD

Hello and welcome back to another instalment of The Baby Feeding Series, that features real stories from real parents who have experienced how hard and baffling feeding your baby can be. I want this series to be a place where parents can share their own experiences in the hopes that other parents who are struggling can feel less alone. Being a parent is the hardest job in the world but it's one of the most rewarding jobs too and so I want to share their stories.


This week for The Baby Feeding Series we have the very lovely Jade from Raw Childhood who has kindly offered to share her breastfeeding journey with Mylo and the difficulties they both faced with an acid re-flux and allergies. So grab a cuppa, sit down as I hand you over to Jade. 

OUR RE-FLUX & ALLERGY JOURNEY

I was hoping for an ‘easy’ life when I had my second because I knew that I only had 1 term off university and I needed to feel reassured that Kevin could handle things back home with both boys (not that I didn’t trust him but I would feel more relaxed if I knew he didn’t really have to do much while I was out).
I am going to be doing this blog in 2 parts, maybe even 3 because it is very long and I don’t want to lose people half way through. I will be posting part two hopefully next month because we start the milk ladder then and I would like to tell you if we have made any progress.
So let me start from the beginning.. with Mylo being my second baby I knew that something was wrong within 24 hours of giving birth.

Here are what Mylo’s symptoms were:

* Pulling on and off the boob when feeding
* Couldn’t lie down flat on his back
* Mucousy nappies
* Constant crying (day and night)
* Refluxing all the time (ok we aren’t talking vomit because his stomach muscles weren’t contracting, he was actually refluxing) and this would frequently be projectile
* Arching his back in pain
* Constant irritability
* Not sleeping
* Struggling with weight gain
* Trumping constantly
Sights like these were a regular occurance

Every time the midwives came to see us (yes they came more than once because it took a bit longer for Mylo to get back up to his birth weight when we came home) I expressed my concerns but they just said to talk to my health visitor. Ok, then my health visitor came when Mylo was a couple of weeks old and I told her that I thought it was colic (because I was told by my GP that my first had colic and it was similar symptoms, looking back now I believe he had reflux). My health visitor said that it wasn’t colic and she thought the symptoms related to reflux. She told me to go and see our GP if the symptoms were still present after another 2 weeks and tell them that she had recommended that I make an appointment – except I didn’t want to wait that long, we had already been pulling our hair out trying to find a reason for these symptoms and then we were given one so I called the doctor that afternoon for an emergency appointment.

GP visit number 1

Fast forward to the appointment and I explained everything that was discussed with my health visitor and she agreed with the reflux and gave Mylo some gaviscon. Mylo played his usual – been up all night crying so now I am in my car seat and at the doctors I am going to take a quick power nap. Unlucky for me the doctor just looked at me like I was being a hypochondriac and a neurotic mother. I swear that 20 minutes earlier he was screaming his head off!

What a pile of rubbish the Gaviscon was, it made him worse because on top of all of the other symptoms we now had severe constipation and sore tummy so I booked another emergency appointment after about a week. Between appointments I joined an online Facebook group called ‘Living With Reflux’, they really opened my eyes. I wanted to understand more about reflux and where better to get information than the people going through it with their children? Other people on the group mentioned about theor babies having CMPA and how CMPA can often cause reflux. I dove deeper into this, I read up about it online, I never slept anyway so I just stayed up with Mylo and read forums and NHS pages about allergies to dairy in infants. When I looked at the symptoms it suddenly hit home that he had A LOT of the symptoms!

His symptoms I described above for his reflux, some of them were actually symptoms for CMPA for example:

* Vomiting
* His reflux was a sign of an allergy
* Colic
* Diarrhoea
* Constipation
* Flatulance
* Stomach pain
* Mucousy or bloody stools (thankfully we never had bloody stools but we did have lots of mucous)
* Distended stomach (his stomach was slightly swollen but we never thought anything of it)

I still was on the fence about Mylo’s CMPA because I had never been through allergies before with my children and myself and Kevin don’t have any allergies either so I was a bit clueless. Deep down I just thought it was bad reflux, I started questioning myself because a lot of the symptoms for reflux and CMPA cross over into each other.

GP visit number 2

So, visit number 2, another emergency appointment. Just my luck, we saw the same doctor, again. I told her the gaviscon wasn’t working so she increased the dose and told me to try it for a couple of weeks.
I mentioned about CMPA and she looked at me and said “no, what you eat does not go through to your breastmilk”. I was a bit bewildered by this in my sleep deprived state and before I knew it I just said oh ok and off I went with the prescription. You don’t think the GP is not going to know about a condition so you don’t question them (especially when your only just looking into it all for yourself).
Symptoms were not improving, they were getting worse. Anyone that has given infant gaviscon to their breastfed baby understands how hard it is to even get the damn thing in their mouth! It had only been a few days since I last saw the doctor but that was it, I was not going to be fobbed off again. I had not slept more than 45 minutes in one go in about 5 weeks now and I was raging that I didn’t feel like I was being taken seriously! So what did I do? I researched, and researched and researched. I mean I delved deep into the internet and I was now armed. I made an emergency appointment. Again. 3rd time lucky?

GP visit number 3

Right I was not taking any rubbish now. There was no way that I was being turned away.
I went into the room with Mylo and as low and behold the SAME doctor AGAIN! Just my luck! Well, she looked at me and knew exactly what the problem was (I should hope so, we’ve seen her 3 times in 2 weeks). I sat down and before she had time to think I just said that the baby gaviscon was more than useless and that I was not leaving until we got a referral to a peadiatrician. She agreed! Hallelujah! Stick to your guns and you will get what you originally went in for (or she just wanted to see the back of me? Either way I got what I wanted).

I feel like I was taken advantage of the first 2 times I went in the doctors. I was exhausted beyond belief, sometimes I didn’t even know my own name, I didn’t even know if I was coming or going. I do believe that they tried to fobbed me off, either that or the doctor that I seen just did not have any training or knowledge of CMPA. I would prefer to have been fobbed off because it is scary to think that a GP will turn you away because they don’t believe your problem is a real one due to them not having any knowledge in the area.

Referral went through and we had our appointment for in 4 weeks time. For me this was not quick enough (I know a lot of people wait a lot longer than this and that isn’t right).
Thankfully I got a lot of support from the Living With Reflux group who advised and helped me when I felt like I was going to go a bit crazy! I cannot thank them enough because they kept me sane. I had enough of waiting around while my baby was so distressed and I couldn’t do anything to help. I had one more option.

Hi ho hi ho it’s off to a&e we go

Yes. We went to a&e. There was no way that I was going to see Mylo poorly for another 4 weeks so I took action and we all went to the hospital. Mylo was having one of his really bad days (which I was thankful for because at least we would be taken seriously and they could see what he is really like, you know what I mean?). He screamed and screamed and screamed and we were taken to the children’s ward.

Doctors and nurses were in and out all day (yep we were there all day and we had Leo too, although I didn’t expect any less to be honest), the paediatrician was lovely and went through everything with us and gave us ranitidine (hallelujah) and sent us on our way, they even gave us a prescription to give to our doctors surgery stating that they should now prescribe it to us and adjust the dose when needed. This felt like a huge weight had been lifted!

Now we had to just wait for our paediatrician hospital appointment..


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About Jade

Jade is an early years professional, mother & blogger. Jade lives in Manchester with her lovely partner Kevin, her two sons Leo and Mylo with another little one coming to join the clan in November. Not forgetting their tea cup yorkie Bailey of course. Jade is an advocate of messy play, learning through play and child-led parenting. They both blog, vlog & run the Raw Childhood community.



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