Reflux?

I am starting to wonder if Ed has reflux, and will be bringing it up with the pediatrician at his two month appointment next week. Those of you who have had reflux infants, what signs should I be watching for?

He’s nine weeks today. For the last couple of weeks I have had to make sure he doesn’t eat too much at once or he’s likely to spit it up. He often has small to medium amounts of spitup, sometimes over an hour since his last feeding. (Martin keeps asking him where he’s keeping it all.) A few times we have had massive, vomiting-the-stomach-contents levels of spitup - maybe twice, I think. Until today.

Today was the mother of all spitups. (And I’m on my own until tomorrow as Martin is driving his mom to Seattle airport.) I hadn’t fed him for about 40 minutes, and was playing with him near his baby gym - lying down, then sitting on my knee for a bit, then I “walked” him toward the mirror which involves holding him under the armpits. A lot of motion, which I wouldn’t have done if it had been RIGHT after a feed, but I figured it had been long enough and he needed some activity. I felt and heard him make a couple of burpy noises which often precede a bit of spitup, so I grabbed a cloth that was handy and held it in front of him.

He spewed an impressive amount of milk/curds into the cloth, but I managed to catch about 95% of it, which of course started rapidly soaking through the cloth. I put it on another one and put the pair on the baby gym mat for dealing with later. A bit of spitup had gotten on his shirt so I picked him up (one arm under his bottom, in a “sitting” position in my arms facing to my left, so as not to jostle him further) and started to bring him upstairs.

I had closed the sliding door in the kitchen leading to upstairs because the fireplace was on in the family room. When I paused to open this door, without warning he gave a HUGE spitup. It came out of his mouth AND his nose and streamed down both his clothes and mine. (I expected to find a huge splash on the wall when I went back later, but there was only a small spot on the kitchen tiles. I’m glad we weren’t on carpet anymore!) Understandably it upset him immensely and he was bawling for what felt like hours (was probably about ten minutes) while I held/rocked him in the downstairs bathroom in case of a third eruption. His breathing sounded very wet and there were milk curd trails coming out of both nostrils. He wasn’t settling and I had just decided to call the midwife and ask if she could come help me when he started to calm down. Once he was calm I tried to lie him down so I could clean him up (I’d already stripped his soaked shirt while we were rocking in the bathroom, and I’m glad it wasn’t a onesie!!) but he started crying again, so I kept holding him. Finally he was calm again so I took him upstairs to get him (and me) some fresh clothes. He looked exhausted and fell asleep on the changing mat upstairs so I just collected some new baby clothes, changed my shirt, and brought him (shirtless) and the clothes back down to the warmed downstairs room. I also brought the nosefrida snotsucker and got some curds out of the poor guy’s nose.

He’s still sleeping, in my sight so I can keep an eye on his breathing. It was a really scary episode, but I think he may have been the more frightened one.