Emma's Story: How I helped my son's reflux with Áine's help

We found the Baby Reflux Lady when my son was ten months old.

He had suffered from constipation and reflux that I do all think was interlinked since he was two weeks old. We've been in and out of the hospital a couple of times with his constipation. We've been told “baby crying is normal”.

When we left [the hospital], it was, “Just remember babies do cry, that's normal!”

We were told that being sick is normal.

And I think everyone just assumes babies are sick a little bit and some a lot, and it's just what is expected of a baby.

Then I got to the point that I thought this wasn't normal. He was crying all the time. He didn't really sleep for longer than two hours at a time until he was three or four months old.

I went through months of having a maximum of four hours of sleep per 24 hours. When I look back now, I can't even imagine how I coped, and I remember people saying, “Emma, you need to try and get more sleep,” but he was only happy sleeping upright on my chest.

I now know that's because of the pain he was in.

My husband and I would take it in turns during the night and watch box sets on the TV, try to stay awake to have him sleep on us and then swap over.

He fed quite often. I did manage to breastfeed him till he was six months old.

On one trip to the hospital, we found out that maybe it [his reflux and pain] was because I was eating dairy, but the paediatricians had different thoughts on that. I tried cutting that out. I wasn't told that I should also cut out soy. He got a bit better but wasn't great, and then, at six months, I couldn't carry on breastfeeding. I'd cut so much out of my diet after seeing a nutritionist. I'd cut out wheat, dairy, other gluten products, onion, chilli, garlic, and bananas! … I was a vegetarian as well; I don't really know what I was living on!

I just couldn't keep up with him, and he was still sick, so I couldn't go places with him.

He would be sick on people's carpets when he started crawling, and he wasn't happy in a car seat because he was so uncomfortable. He would just scream on any journey. That worried me and meant I couldn't go out as much as I wanted to.

At ten months, I'd frantically been Googling again about reflux, and the Baby Reflux Lady popped up. I got in touch with one of her trained Baby Reflux Ladies, and she sent me a really thorough questionnaire. I went through all the questions about his symptoms and his birth; it was really in-depth. It was clear that it was going to be a really holistic approach. and sort of drawing everything in, um and his cause was dairy and soy (he was on soy formula), and it was also massive air intake through the crying.

It's just a horrible, vicious cycle.

I also bought Áine’s book, and I read through that and just found all of a sudden, I understood what was happening in his body. I understood that the reason he was upset all the time was because he was in pain, and it just gave me so much knowledge to be able to help him and be proactive.

I then decided to buy the solids course.

I started weaning my baby at six and a half months after changing his formula and seeing an improvement in his reflux.

But his reflux really got worse when we started weaning. I just remember seeing a lot of mums and my antenatal classmates and getting really excited about weaning and enjoying it, and their baby enjoying it. And this is making me emotional just saying this, and their baby is enjoying it, and we didn't have that.

He started being sick more. His sleeping was worse; it just didn't help at all.

I think all the doctors and health visitors and different people say, “Start them on solids early, and that will hold everything down because it's heavier.” - it's not true.

It doesn't ring true.

I've been there.

I've witnessed it.

It just means that they're sick is then orange because they've had carrot or purple if they've had beetroot. And it's horrible.

If you're bringing up liquid, that's one thing.

If you're then bringing up solids, I can't even imagine how horrible that is: every meal you have, your mom's forcing [food] down you, and you're it bringing up.

He was trying to tell me something.

There were some foods that he did happily eat and others he really didn't.

I would be trying to mix this puree with that one and get him to eat it.

I now know to listen to him. He is very in tune with his body.

I bought the changing solids course and pretty much went completely back to basics.

I knew he was fine with chicken, and I knew he was fine with mango, so we just did a week of that just to clear his system out and stop all the inflammation and all the sort of reflux that had really kicked off again.

We followed Áine’s plan, and I then understood why I was doing those foods as well.

It just gave me a lot of power, and I thought I could tell other people as well. Because I think that's half of the battle: other people saying, “oh, you should try this, you should do this”, and I think, unless you've been there with a baby with reflux, you don't understand.

So it just was really empowering.

It made complete sense.

It was easy to do.

I did it all online. I did it in between him napping or feeding on me or whatever, and it was so empowering.

I can't recommend it enough. It's completely changed our lives, and he loves food.

He gets excited about food, and it's completely changed our journey.

Yeah, I would definitely recommend it.

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If you're interested in learning more about how you can help your baby and you're hearing similarities between your story and Emma's, you will find the Weaning Course included in the Reflux Free Baby System.