Reflux in a baby: alarm symptoms and causes

reflux in baby and heartburn is very frequent in infants, who usually suffer from it due to the maturation process of the cardia (the sphincter that separates the esophagus from the stomach). However, considering a baby from one to four months cries more than three hours a day and in an irrepressible way one must also think of other possible causes. In this article we tell you what could be the cause of the reflux in a baby when it is pathological and how to soothe the colic it causes.

Reflux in the baby: possible causes

A baby with persistent reflux you could suffer from cow’s milk intolerance or gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), or both associated.

Yointolerance to cow’s milk. Up to 2% of consultations for milk intolerance are being found, even in children who have never drank cow’s milk, but whose intestines react to a protein of that origin: beta-lactoglobulin. The baby reacts to formula derived from cow’s milk or to breast milk if the mother consumes dairy. This protein enters their bodies by two possible pathways: formula milks derived from cow’s milk and from human breast milk itselfto which beta-lactoglobulin molecules arrive from dairy products ingested by the mother. Gastroesophageal reflux disease.Up to 6% of apparently healthy babies have undiagnosed GERD. What causes the baby to regurgitate is the opening of the cardia: until 70% of healthy four-month-old babies regurgitate at least once a day, and as much as the contents of a soup spoon. But the baby with GERD does it in greater quantity and frequency.

REFLUX IN A BABY: SYMPTOMS OF INTOLERANCE TO COW’S MILK

So, even a breastfed babyraised purely by breast and who has never known cow’s milk, can present a intestinal allergic picture against this type of milk. The usual symptoms are:

Pains Inflammation Stools full of mucus and blood.

REFLUX IN A BABY: SYMPTOMS OF gastroesophageal reflux

When the baby has gastroesophageal reflux disease, they may have these symptoms:

arches back to stop the rise of gastric juices. It has persistent hiccups due to irritation of the esophagus. Stop laughing and playing.becomes hot-tempered and he loses his sleep and eating rhythms: he wakes up crying and coughing, and wants milk all the time –to soothe his heartburn–, but he can’t tolerate its passage through an irritated esophagus, so ends up skipping meals and stop gaining weight.

The intestinal reactivity of children, once these symptoms subside, disappears on its own between the third and fifth year of life.

Reflux in a baby: how to calm colic

The baby with GERD becomes insufferable with the esophagus worse and worse: there are babies who literally burn from the inside with the juices of their own stomach and only calm down a little when held in arms face down and on a gentle slope of thirty degrees, head up. This is the only position in which the baby’s cardia is above the lake of hydrochloric acid in the stomach.

Colic due to intolerance to milk protein they begin to disappear as soon as the mother, without interrupting lactation, abandons dairy products. It is a complicated solution if you are not used to moderate dairy consumption, because the list of manufactured foods that use dairy is long.