One of our twins was only a few weeks old when we first noticed her struggling to swallow not long after a feed, she would also be sick after some feeds and grunt in discomfort after others. Her GP prescribed Infant Gaviscon for her.

What is reflux?
Very simply babies suffer from reflux when the valve at the top of their stomach doesn't close properly allowing the contents to travel back up sometimes making baby sick and the acid can burn baby on the way.

How does Infant Gaviscon work?
The product is described as working by 'stabilising the stomach content.

Packaging
The box contains 30 doses and a patient information leaflet. The dose sachets are in pairs so 15 of these in a box. You have to cut the sachets apart if you are only going to be using one and you also have to cut the sachet open. It has cut here and --- printed across one corner of the sachet but I found it easier to cut across the bottom of the sachet to get all the powder out. A few perforations wouldn't go a miss!

How to use the product
This varies depending on the age and weight of your baby and whether you are bottle or breast feeding. The leaflet explains the number of sachets to use and how to mix it. The bottle feeding instructions are simply to add the sachet to at least 115ml/4oz of feed. Unfortunately I was mainly breast feeding and the top up bottles weren't big enough to be able to follow the bottle feeding instructions. The instructions for breast feeding involve mixing the sachet with 5ml of cooled boiled water to make a paste then adding another 10ml and mixing again. I found this a lot of extra work, just remembering to boil the kettle before the feed was a challenge! It advises mixing in a glass but I found this really difficult and quickly swapped to using a sterilised small plastic pot I had. The first time I tried feeding to baby she refused it, we tried a spoon, syringe and bottle and she wasn't having any of it. We then tried adding 15ml expressed milk to the solution in a bottle and finally she drank it which was a great relief. The instructions say to give it at the end of a feed but by the end of a feed she wasn't hungry anymore we did it halfway through the feed.
You can use up to 6 doses a day, we never used it for night feeds as it worked with just the daytime feeds.


How quickly does it work?
It took best part of a week to start seeing an improvement, I was expecting it to start working straight away but the health visitor advised to give it time.

Any side effects?
We found that that she started getting constipated after a few days of taking it which we solved with a small amount of cooled boiled water between feeds. Once her reflux was under control we reduced the number of doses to find a balance where the reflux was still under control but she wasn't constipated.

Would I recommend?
Yes, it worked for us and I was pleased that we didn't have to go down the route of stronger medications.