5 Month Old Son Spits up A lot

Hi Everyone,

My wife and I have an adorable 5 month old son, for the first three months she was only breast feeding him and after that I became a stay at home father, as we did not want to put him in a daycare. For the past 2 months, I have been giving him formula during the day and the wife breast feeds him in the evening.

The problem is that he spits up a lot. When he was only getting breast-milk he would spit up a lot and now on formula it is the same. I have read a lot of the forums on this site, and it seems a lot of people have the exact same problem; However they found something that helps. With us, our son spits up breast milk, soy based formula, milk based formula whether it be with lactose or lactose-free.

I have used Enfamil Gentlease, Enfamil A.R, Enfamil PREMIUM, switched to Similac Advance, Similac Sensitive and Similac Sensitive for Spit-Up and nothing works. We have tried the pre-mixed version and also the cans where you add water, baby water is used. Our son spits up everything he eats. After feeding him a few ounces, he is burped, spits up a little, which is normal and how it should be, and then after 20 minutes, he will spits up half of the food, then about 10 minutes later he will spit up whatever is left. The great thing is that he is gaining weight as normal, but spitting up this much is worrisome. He is right 17lbs - 18lbs, and was born 8.6lbs.

We have spoke to our pediatrician and he said as long as the baby keeps growing, it is nothing to worry about. From doing my own research, babies typically always spit up about a tablespoon, but to feed a baby 5-6 oz and have them spit up everything after 15-20 minutes of feeding, cannot be a normal thing. I change his outfits about 5 times a day, go through a few bibs and change my own shirt quite often.

This is quite frustrating for me and a little stressful. I just wish the food would stay in his stomach like it should. We have to put special ointment under his neck, as he was starting to get a rash from all the spitting up, and we constantly have to put a lot of baby power on his crest and his neck to keep the area dry.

The good thing is he is a very well behaved baby, he only cries if he is hungry, tired or needs a change. All the spitting up does not seem to bother him, just us as we are concerned. Has anyone else had a serious spitting up problem on this forum, and if so, what did you do?

Thank you!

[babygirlbb]

i had this same problem and baby was on the wrong formula i just had to try every formula out there and nothing worked the only thing that worked and i know this sounds really odd and they tell you its odd but my mom did it with me also and i did it with my child.... i mixed eagle brand milk with bottled water and niether my baby or i spit it back up and it seemed to do just fine with my baby

[babygirlbb]

hope that helped

[mum2beagain]

Does your baby seem in discomfort or pain after feedings or is he very gassy? If so these could be things to further discuss with the doctor.
Sometimes a little goes a long way; what can seem like a huge amount isn't at all. Just as a experiment put a couple of table spoons of water on your counter top; see how big of an area it covers, he may not be throwing up as much as you think!
Maybe you could also try smaller but more frequent feeds or a slower flow nipple as it could be he is over feeding because he just has a strong desire to s.uck. My sister's baby is like this, she would guzzle two bottles in one sitting if they let her and she would throw up a fair bit if she had 5 ounces. They gave her smaller feeds through a very slow flow nipple and then after burping gave her her pacifier which she then likes to continue to s.uck on for sometime. This made things better.

All in all if he is gaining it sounds like health wise he is okay, it just isn't fun for them to be spitting up all the time. You will just have to keep trying different things until you find the best solution.
One of my babies threw up a lot for seemingly no reason, he did (after many loads of laundry) finally out grow it.

Good luck.