Any Other Moms Have Babies on Nutramigen with Rice Cereal and Zantac?

Oh yes - I've been there. If she's suddenly started not eating as much and being fussier (and throwing up more), then she may have outgrown the Zantac doseage. It goes by weight. Or she may need a stronger medicine. Zantac doesn't work for something like 80% of babies with reflux. They need Prevacid or Prilosec. Talk to your pedi about trying one of the other medicines. As for rice cereal... it's a double edged sword. Yes, she'll be less likely to spit up. But she'll be getting less nutrition since she'll have fewer ounces of formula and more empty calories (the rice has virtually no nutrition). Plus, since she's only four months old, her system is probably not ready to digest solid food and the rice cereal may make her backed up, gassy, and ultimately lead to more reflux.

What worked for us was a combination of Prilosec, Nutramigen, and making sure that my daughter was fully upright (ie - held) for 30 minutes after every feeding, plus raising the head of her crib so that she never slept flat.

The spit up is super annoying, but it's actually the least worrisome part of reflux. Many doctors refer to spitting up as "a laundry problem" not a medical problem. So if you can adjust how she's sleeping (not flat) and get different medicine, you may find she's eating well, not fussy, and sleeping ok. If so, I'd just deal with the spit up and avoid doing the rice cereal. My two cents.

I agree with Everly below. You will need to constantly re-adjust your child's dose of Zantac. Every time she has a growth spurt, you'll need to do it. Think of it this way, an infant that goes from 10 to 12 pounds just added 20% more body weight. To us, 2 pounds doesn't seem like much but as a percentage of their total weight, it's a lot and meds need to be adjusted to account for it.

I tried adding rice to the bottle, and it didn't help my child.

In the long run, we just had to wait for him to outgrow it.

my daughter was breast fed.. and she spit up constantly till she was eating solid foods at about 5 months. we tried zantac and it made her less fussy but she was still a spitter.If she had been on formula I am sure we would have changed formula several times to try to help her spit up less aned be less fussy.. but since she was breastfed.. we just kept on nursing..

she will outgrow this in time. some day the valve at the top of her tummy will be tighter and she will spit up less.. even if you did nothing.. she will outgrow this ..

I didn't read the responses, but it's absolutely NOT recommended to #1: give rice cereal to a 4mo and #2: put rice cereal in a bottle. Rice cereal also has no nutritional value, so there's no benefit to it at all and actually can cause painful constipation because baby's digestive system just can't handle it.

I'm glad to hear that her eating is back to normal :) When she's ready for solids, she'll let you know, and it's best to give her tastes of whatever you're eating, with the exceptions of allergens such as eggs and honey. I know peanut butter isn't recommended until like age 3, but both my kids have eaten it since 6mo, and we have no nut allergies in our families, so there were no problems for us.

I also want to add that Reva wasn't necessarily attacking your use of formula; she may have been more commenting in a hurry that a 4mo baby shouldn't have only breast milk or formula. I'm sorry you feel the need to defend your choice for feeding your child, and I say this as a breastfeeding counselor. We all need to be more respectful of a mom's decisions :)

she should be drinking only mother's milk at 4 months.

I just don't get why docs think that babies should start eating cereal so early. They have infant tummies, the food won't digest, it will sit there and rot and make her feel even worse. It could cause gas that will make her cry and cry. It might go on through but chances are it will only complicate things more, especially once it starts coming out as pooh, if it comes out. She might even be constipated from eating rice too early.

You are her mom and I can only tell you that right now nearly every family I know is going through stomach viruses left and right. And also upper respiratory infections. So I would not swear that she isn't having one of those on top of everything else.

Our little guy got .9 ml, it was a tiny super thing syringe, of orange smelling liquid about 10-15 minutes before he got a bottle. It sort of numbed his tummy and relaxed it. The food was able to pass on through the opening quicker and the food went on down to the intestines and to digestion.

He also got Mylantin gas drops in the formula water that we used to make the bottles. We would take each bottle and put the drops in, then add nursery water, then add the powder, we would swirl the powder and stuff until the powder was dissolved. This also cut down on the gas due to no bubbles in the water.