Katie's Reflux

Katie's story is almost the opposite of Eli's so I thought it would be nice to share that too. Katie is what is known as a happy spitter. She spit up after every feeding, sometimes so much that I couldn't imagine that she had kept anything in. She would spit up any time from right after a feeding up to an hour after her feeding. I believe I first asked about Katie's spit up at her 2 week check up. Her doctor told me that every baby has some form of reflux up until they are 1 year old because their digestive track isn't completely developed. Since Katie was a happy spitter, meaning she showed no discomfort, he recommended that we not medicate as long as she was gaining weight consistently. The medication does not reduce the spitting up, just the pain associated with it.

Brayden was also a spitter, so it was easy for us to know what we needed to be prepared. First, we used cloth diapers to clean the mess up. I always had at least 2 on the arm of the couch where we did our feedings. We also staged them throughout the house having one in at least each room that Katie spent time in. At the first sign of spit up, one of us would yell "Diaper Cloth" and whoever was closest to the cloth in the room would toss it to the person closest to Katie. It was actually kind of fun at times. I also never left without at least 3 changes of clothes for Katie and an extra shirt for myself. There were many times I used all 3 outfits in one outing. One item we had that helped with Brayden was our dogs. When he was a baby we had 2 dogs that lived in the house. As gross as it sounds, they loved to "help" clean up the spit up. I never knew how great it was until we faced the same situation with Katie without the dogs. Our couch and carpets were littered with stains. Let's face it, I had no time to break out the Resolve every time Katie spit up.

I incorrectly assumed that Katie's reflux would get better when she started eating solid food. This was NOT the case. If anything, she was so excited about eating real food that she would overeat and spit up even more. Our carpet was constantly decorated with orange spots since Katie's favorites were carrots and sweet potatoes. I tried everything including a steam cleaner to get the spots up. Eventually they faded with time, thank goodness!

Katie's spit up was less frequent when she began eating finger foods. She began this a bit earlier than most kids, I think because she would watch Stephanie and Brayden eat and wanted to be more like them. By the time she was 7 months old she was almost exclusively self feeding. Her spitting up tapered off and was almost completely gone by the time she was 10 months old.

Since Katie is getting fussy, I really don't have time for a proper conclusion. I hope this gives a glance into the mild side of reflux though. Except for some extra cleaning, it really did not affect our life at all.