# GERD kids



## daleau (Jan 24, 2005)

My 6 year old daughter has recently been diagnosed with GERD and started on Ranitidine, twice a day. Her dosage was low (the pharmacist said so), and so just this morning we increased it to a hopefully more effective dose. When she first started it at the lower dose, I found that the medication would reduce her belly pain almost instantly but she was still complaining intermittently (but several times a day) about that "weird feeling in my throat".

So, we started the higher dose today but so far she is still complaining a bit about the weird feeling in her throat.

Any insights? How effective is Ranitidine typically speaking? And what else can we do? She's taking probiotics and eating a good solid diet of whole foods. Over the past few weeks she has been obsessed with "gymnastics" and has been spending much of her time upside down, so I have encouraged her to remain mostly upright until this is resolved. Seriously though, I just want it resolved already. Hate seeing my baby in pain.


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## HappyHappyMommy (Mar 9, 2009)

It's so hard to see our DC in pain!







It looks like your post might have been missed, so I'm bumping it up for attention.







Anyone have experiences to share?


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## USAmma (Nov 29, 2001)

I am a peds RN but I can't give medical advice. I can explain that ranitidine is only one reflux med and there are many others to choose from. Prevacid is commonly given to my peds patients who suffer from GERD. It seems to work pretty well (my own DD and DH take it). I see Ranitidine given more to babies and Prevacid given more to kids older than 4 or so.

You might also look into her diet and see if you can make changes. Is her GERD worse at certain times of the day? Maybe it's related to her last meal being too rich or a food that's bad for GERD.


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## jmarroq (Jul 2, 2008)

That's probably one of the only drugs we haven't tried yet. My daughter's docs lean toward Nexium. It doesn't really cut down on the amount of spitting up that much (she actually spits it all the way out...swallows it sometimes if she is embarrassed or can't get to potty). It does, however, cut down on the amount of acid in the spit up, supposedly, so she doesn't damage her esophagus.

I am going to ask her doc about zantac. We have also tried prevacid in the past, and reglan.

My daughter is 7. She was preemie and was on high calorie formula for a while. I am wondering if that is what destroyed her stomach. She didn't spit up excessively as an infant, but she did have GERD symptoms and she was collicky for a while. She went on to have mysterious night vomiting and stomach issues and pain for years. Then she started spitting up here and there around age 4 or 5. This summer she started spitting up A LOT....dozens of times daily. We had to carry around sandwich baggies with us, and some days she would fill one up. We are down to about 5 times daily at the moment.

I am glad to see I not the only one with a non-infant child who has major stomach issues. A lot of what I read talks about babies...not older kids who spit.


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## USAmma (Nov 29, 2001)

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *jmarroq*
> 
> That's probably one of the only drugs we haven't tried yet. My daughter's docs lean toward Nexium. It doesn't really cut down on the amount of spitting up that much (she actually spits it all the way out...swallows it sometimes if she is embarrassed or can't get to potty). It does, however, cut down on the amount of acid in the spit up, supposedly, so she doesn't damage her esophagus.
> 
> ...


 I'm sorry you and your dd are still struggling with this. :-( My 10 year old was tube-fed for 5.5 years of her life so I can relate to the questions about formulas and such. When is the last time you had your dd scoped? My dd ended up with eosinophilic esophagitis and it was missed until she was almost 3. Once we had the right diagnosis things improved dramatically and she is now 10 and doing great. We had been treating it as reflux but the approach was totally wrong for her. My other dd, coincidentally, was diagnosed with Celiac at age 7. She too started to have tummy problems so I took her to the same GI and she was scoped and surprise, she had this! Antibodies tests of all of us revealed that dh had the antibodies for Celiac too. It could be something like this which is only visible through a scope and biopsy. But once we found the answers to both our children life got so much better for all of us.

Also, it could be a hiatal hernia or something based on her being a preemie. A scope would find that, too. I hope she's feeling better soon and you have some answers.


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## jmarroq (Jul 2, 2008)

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *USAmma*
> 
> I'm sorry you and your dd are still struggling with this. :-( My 10 year old was tube-fed for 5.5 years of her life so I can relate to the questions about formulas and such. When is the last time you had your dd scoped? My dd ended up with eosinophilic esophagitis and it was missed until she was almost 3. Once we had the right diagnosis things improved dramatically and she is now 10 and doing great. We had been treating it as reflux but the approach was totally wrong for her. My other dd, coincidentally, was diagnosed with Celiac at age 7. She too started to have tummy problems so I took her to the same GI and she was scoped and surprise, she had this! Antibodies tests of all of us revealed that dh had the antibodies for Celiac too. It could be something like this which is only visible through a scope and biopsy. But once we found the answers to both our children life got so much better for all of us.
> 
> Also, it could be a hiatal hernia or something based on her being a preemie. A scope would find that, too. I hope she's feeling better soon and you have some answers.


She was scoped twice. Once at 3 and once at 6. They never found anything unusual...no celiac, no food allergies, etc.

I have been giving her small amounts of aloe juice lately, and she seems a little better. Less than three spit ups per day for almost a week now.

My daughter's counselor says we really need to work on her expressing emotions now, because she does not want her to have emotions tied to digestion issues. She fears she may have an eating disorder in the future if we don't get this under control in the next couple of years.


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