Being sick

[beverley]

Hi,
My son is 5 and a half months and I started him on solids a month ago. I decided to wean early as he is a big baby (98th centile for length, 75th for weight), was grizzling after an 8oz feed and started wanting night feeds again. However, my main reason was his CONSTANT sicking!

My HV is useless and won't give me any advice on this at all. He was exclusively breast fed for a while (and was sick a lot) then I mixed breast, expressed and formula (and he was sick a lot). At 4 months I moved to just formula (and yes, he was sick a lot) and now I have started to introduce solids (yes, you guessed it, he's sick a lot!).

It doesn't bother him when he's sick - there seems to be no pain with it. Sometimes it's no more than a sicky dribble, other times it's about 1-2 oz (estimating, obviously!!). His weight gain is fine, although he has dropped from above the 75th centile to just below it.

His average daily sick is 20 times - which given he's only awake for 9 hours a day seems a lot to me. There's no pattern to it - for example he wasn't at all sick after breakfast on Monday, yet Tuesday he had exactly the same and was sick 10 times before 11am.

I've read as much as I can about weaning / feeding etc. but it always seems that the advice isn't quite applicable. Does anyone think I'm over-feeding? (Bearing in mind that he is a very long baby and always quite peckish!). I have already cut his feeds down from 8oz to 6oz but to be honest it hasn't made any difference to his sicking. He also throws up some solid (making very interesting stains on my clothes!)

7am - cereal made with 3oz milk + 5oz milk
10:30am - 6oz milk
1pm - 3 cubes of vegetable or fruit
3pm - 6 oz milk
5:30 pm - 2 cubes of vegetable or fruit
7pm - 8oz milk (he is NEVER sick after his bed time feed)

Any suggestions would be appreciated
xx

[cazfletcher]

health visitors do tend to be useless unless your child exactly matches the one in the "perfect child" book. have you tried your gp? it sounds like he may have reflux, as you dont seem to be overfeeding at all. or maybe your gp may be able to give something to stop the vomitting

[cheshire]

Hi La,

We had a big baby too - over 10lbs born - who (we were advised to do this by the midwife/ HV - and boy did he need it!) we weaned from about 4 months (if memory serves me correctly). He went through spells (it's hard to remember exactly when) of being sick after milk and food - it felt as if he was always hungry because of his size, but his body couldn't process it? Like you, last bottle of the night was rarely a problem though.

Sorry you're having such a hard time with itx I was quite ill (PNI) by the time my son was like this - he choked and was sick quite a bit and it upset me and made me v.anxious. But he is doing ok now and eats just about anything and is only sick if he has a specific illness etc.

Thinking of you

Hopefulxx