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.

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.