Tag Archives: reflux

Acknowledging the link between reflux and PND

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This post on Mumsnet has prompted me to examine the link between infant reflux and PND. I’m not going to add my comment to the thread itself as it would make me identifiable in RL, but my heart went out to the poster. She talks about her daughter’s silent reflux and her resulting PND being much easier to cope with when the baby is feeding well.

My youngest son has reflux – and has had from about 3 weeks of age. Its severity when he was a very tiny baby was such that he was an inpatient at the hospital for a month from the age of about six weeks. He has been on adult strength antacid medication since then and shows no signs of needing it less.

The impact on our family life of this condition has been huge. I have chronicled B’s sleep problems enough not to go on about it again here, but one reason we have failed to act decisively about sleep training is because we are always second guessing whether he is crying because of acid pain, or for other reasons. At almost two, he is still too young to tell us what is going on, so a lot of it is guesswork.

But in the early months, it was so much worse. Seeing your baby screaming in pain almost 24/7 is extremely traumatic. He had to be held upright all the time, which has given my partner a chronic back/shoulder condition. Breastfeeding was a nightmare and seeing him screaming while attached to my body was a major factor in stopping (not to mention unsuccessful breastfeeding being a key indicator of PND). No amount of “help” could alleviate the agony of seeing him in so much pain, and my inability to do anything about it. It’s impossible to feel good about life and about yourself when you have “failed” at such a basic and instinctive task – keeping your baby safe from harm. All I could try and do was cope. And then deal with the guilt I felt about my powerlessness.

Things have improved hugely since then. In the daytime at least, B is a very happy toddler. His screams currently stem from his being nearly two and angry at the world for not indulging his every whim, and not physical pain. This is due in part to medication, and in part to his body gradually maturing. At once stage he looked like a candidate for surgery, but that possibility has receded. It is now about managing symptoms with as little medical intervention as possible.

But the early mental scars remain. I still panic when I see him refluxing (made worse when teething or ill). It taps into a very dark part of my psyche, one that wants to shut off and ignore the reality because I can’t bear my baby’s pain. The original poster probably will never read this blog, but across the ether I wish her well, and hope both the PND and reflux improve. TIme is certainly a healer on both counts, but it is an issue that I think should be flagged up to GPs and other HCPs when dealing with babies with chronic and painful conditions.

How many points for inadvertent attachment parenting?

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It’s been pretty hard to escape the cover of Time Magazine this week, with the picture of the young, glamorous mother breastfeeding her four year-old son, accompanied by the strapline, “Are you mom enough?”

Well, clearly not, as I didn’t manage to breastfeed my sons for any length of time. But the cover was designed to illustrate the article inside about attachment parenting, the philosophy of childrearing coined by Dr William Sears in the 1980s (and nothing to do with oodles of press coverage, honest guv).

To massively oversimplify the concept, attachment parenting essentially means being led by your child and allowing the to be as close to you as they wish, until they’re then ready to move away. The theory is that this will encourage the child to be more self-reliant, as they separated from their mother at the time of choosing, rather than the parent enforcing more “socially acceptable” limits for bed sharing, breastfeeding, etc.

Typically, attachment parents wear their babies in slings rather than carting them around in prams, co-sleep (share the same bed), and breastfeed for as long as the child likes.

As I said, while I didn’t manage the breastfeeding, I seem to have accidentally attachment parented my second son. Due to his severe reflux, he had to be carried upright in a sling practically 24/7 as lying on his back would mean he’d gag and choke on the stomach acid that came back. Whenever he cried in the night, we’d immediately rush to his side as were weren’t about to ignore a baby who might be in pain.

Now he’s 16 months and still carried a lot (still has a lot of symptoms, plus he’s naturally cuddly) and we’ve begun to bring him into our bed in the mornings as he screams at 5am and our house is made of margarine so his brother in the room next door wakes then too. And the whole household starts at that hideous time. However, if I bring him into my bed, we get an hour more, all going well. Before this, I actually got into his cot with him instead, and still probably would be if that worked. Yes, thanks to yoga, it is possible to get an adult and a baby into a cot together. Painful, but possible.

Thing is, I never intended this to be the way. If anything, my second child was going to be in more of a routine than his brother, sleeping through early because of the structured feeds, into nursery earlier than the other so I could get back to work etc. His illness put paid to that, and he has been toted around, fed on demand, and sleeps wherever he wants, pretty much.

He is the happiest, cuddliest child you could imagine. Whether it’s personality, “attachment”, or simply the joy of not being in pain anymore thanks to the wonders of Omeprazole, I don’t know. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Happy baby, happy mummy?

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Yes, I know you normally see that phrase the other way round (and in my case usually justifying my consumption of wine), but it occurred to me as I was at my GP’s medication review this morning that, for me, it works very much both ways. I was explaining how I had naturally reduced my antidepressant dose due to my increased sleep (as the boys are both well at the moment, touch wood), and headspace now that B is starting nursery.

The reality for most parents is that they want to see their children happy, and that their happiness is in itself a source of joy. You don’t have to be a psycho “live through your kids” parent to enjoy their laughter and play and, by the same token, feel their pain and unhappiness when things are going badly for them, physically and/or emotionally.

I suspect that many parents whose children have been ill or in pain would happily trade places with them if it could alleviate their suffering. I know that, in the grand scheme of things, B’s reflux that required intensive hospitalisation in the first few months is no biggie, compared with what other children go through for much longer. But I do acutely remember the anxiety as felt as I tried to feed this screaming child, knowing that what he needed to survive was also causing him immense pain.

Small wonder that, in the first year, I ticked most of the boxes in the Edinburgh postnatal depression questionnaire. Of course I was exhausted and unhappy and anxious – my child was suffering (and, by association and my absence, his big brother too). I don’t feel that it was the sole cause of my PND, but it was definitely a factor, and one that is not frequently mentioned when discussing the subject.

So, the fact that my mood is lighter is almost certainly due to a number of things – more sleep, more independence, all the little things I’ve build into my daily life since starting this blog. But in large part it is also seeing my two boys making each other crack up in the bath together, or eating their dinner with gusto. This time last year I wouldn’t have been able to imagine it, and while nothing is certain or lasting in life, these are moments I will genuinely treasure.