Another use of infant probiotics

My son's reflux seemed to have been helped by the use of Udo's Choice Infant's Blend Probiotic as I've outlined in some previous posts. After I was done pumping, we used the Good Start formula, also with probiotics because the benefits were so great.

On October 6, 2009, an article was published by Medpagetoday stating that

a milk protein supplement, taken alone or in combination with a probiotic, seemed to reduce the incidence of sepsis among the smallest of premature infants

Mayo News also published an article just yesterday (Oct 12, 2009) outlining that eczema could also be helped by both probiotics and prebiotics taken daily.

What I've come to realize is that probiotics can also be used to treat chronic constipation. My eldest son was always constipated. We had tried so many things and just continued to get frustrated. We ate a lot of fruits and vegetables and whole grains. I started giving him wheat bran mixed with applesauce or yogurt and that helped but didn't solve it. I started eating Activia yogurt and he would have his own...eventually his intestines seemed to improve. He was no longer constipated. He has a yogurt every day. When he goes awhile without Activia, he starts getting problems again.

My youngest now, is showing signs of the same chronic constipation. I reached for my Udo's Infant probiotics and started giving him some 2x a day and eventually, his stools became much softer. I'm hoping that I can prevent 2 years of constipation, like my oldest had to endure by being proactive with my probiotics.

Acid Reflux drugs could be tied to Pneumonia

Wow. As a mother who has given her son Prevacid, this doesn't make me feel good. But it DOES confirm wanting to find a more natural way of alleviating his acid reflux without drugs. According to the NY Times:

But a new study has found that patients who take these so-called proton pump inhibitors are at higher risk for pneumonia than those who do not.

Why might this happen? This is alarming to me because when I picked up the Prevacid from the pharmacy, the side effects listed for Prevacid were NONE.

Dr. Herzig said that proton pump inhibitors, which suppress acid in the stomach, might promote the growth of different types of bacteria in the upper gastrointestinal and respiratory tract, and that those bacteria might be the culprits in the pneumonias. Another explanation, she suggested, may be that acid stimulates coughing, and coughing less may promote pneumonia.

All in all, I hope parents (along with the help of their pediatrician) look into alternate treatments of acid reflux in babies. While a prescription seems like it would be an easy fix, as you can see from the article in the NY Times, sometimes they just don't have all the data they need to make the conclusion that the benefits outweighs the risks.

Our choice for probiotics

As mentioned earlier, we used Udo's Infant Probiotics to help our son's acid reflux. The site that we'd been using to purchase our vitamins was iHerb.com. We tend to order a lot of vitamins and supplements and so we like the free shipping for orders over $40.
(Psst! Wanna save some money? For new customers to iHerb, use the coupon code: SIC634 and save $5. )

Probiotics as treatment of acid reflux in babies

While researching various reflux treatments including gripe water and other homeopathic products, we stumbled upon probiotics. These were not foreign to us, and my husband started thinking. Maybe probiotics were what was needed. After all, the faster he digested his food (breastmilk) the less likely there would be acid to come back up his esophogus. We checked with our pediatrician and she said that we might as well try - it couldn't harm him.

So we settled on Udo's Infant Probiotic. It cost us less than the Prevacid. After receiving it, we began to give him a 1/2 teaspoon three times a day in his breastmilk. Within a couple of days, we started seeing a decrease in how much he was spitting up. Within a couple weeks, he was sleeping in a crib! Until then he had been sleeping in his swing. I couldn't believe it. We maintained the regimine for about a month and then started tapering it off to twice a day. By six months, we were down to one time a day and many days we didn't give him any at all. Comparatively, the doctor thought that he would be on Prevacid for 6 months to a year. Yikes!

I do believe that my son did not have a severe case of reflux. I have talked to other moms that go through a really challenging first year trying to figure out the best treatment. While probiotics is not a mainstream treatment for acid reflux in infants, I'm hoping this website can at least give some parents another option that may help their child. I didn't think my baby was ever going to be happy. The probiotics worked for him - and I ended up having an extremely happy and smiling little boy. Who sleeps on his back.

Treatment for Acid Reflux in Babies

There is a wide variety of treatment options when dealing with acid reflux and babies. A baby's digestive system is so immature and needs something gentle. Some of the products we tried were:

1. Colic Calm. We really liked this product. We found great reviews and felt great knowing that it was an all natural product. The only negative feedback was that it is black (due to the vegetable charcoal) and that wasn't as bad as I thought it would. Granted, he would spit up once in a while and his bib would get black, but would come out when you pre-treated it.

2. Prevacid. This did help him, but it treated the symptoms (spitting up, etc...) and wasn't treating the root of the problem. Which is his tummy wasn't digesting his milk. Plus, it was expensive. I think we have good health insurance, but it was still costing us $50 a month for the Prevacid. Side effects (according to drugs.com) are:

• headache;

• nausea, stomach pain;

• diarrhea; or

• constipation

The strange thing is when I picked up the prescription from the pharmacy, the list of side effects said 'none'. We didn't want to keep him on this for a long time, so we continued our research of all natural things that could help his reflux.

3. Probiotics. More to come on this one.

Acid Reflux in Babies - Our Story

When our first child was born - he was a great baby. Very healthy - no issues with eating, slept great, not sick very often. We heard from so many other people, "you have no idea how good you have it". We didn't. We had nothing else to compare it to.

Three and half years later, our next son with born. Just like our first son, I was going to breastfeed him for as long as I could. An odd thing happened; however, he was miserable after feedings! We thought it was what I was eating. So I eliminated dairy, thinking this was an obvious culprit. This was a sacrifice - I'm from WI. But that didn't seem to help. So I started cutting out other things like eggs. STILL didn't help. I wasn't getting sleep - neither was my husband. It was awful. I chalked it up to colic.

We ordered colic calm and it helped! Hooray! But it would last for a couple of hours. Thankfully, this was all natural and we could keep giving it to him. This wasn't ideal for us since the symptoms were lasting hours. I started doing research and realized that he must have reflux. He was acting consistent with the symptoms - arching his back when eating, crying during feedings, spitting up massive amounts of milk, not sleeping for long periods of time.

We went to the pediatrician and she agreed - it was reflux and she prescribed Prevacid.

Prevacid is expensive. It's not natural. We didn't want our son to be dependent on pharmaceuticals at such a tiny little age. We wanted to find something that would correct the reflux. Not something that would just temporarily help. And then we found probiotics.