Does anti-reflux milk help with reflux?

What is anti-reflux milk?

Anti-reflux formula is standard infant formula with a thickening agent in it — usually a starch or a gum. The milk is heavier, so less of it comes straight back up. That is the whole mechanism.

It is sold on a shelf, not prescribed, and it is not treating anything. We found that framing useful, because once we stopped thinking of it as medicine we also stopped expecting it to tell us whether something was wrong with her.

It reduced the volume of what came back up noticeably. Fewer full changes of clothes, fewer soaked muslins, and less of that feeling that an entire feed had gone onto the sofa. More of the feed also seemed to stay down.

It did not stop spit-up, and it did not change her mood or her weight curve. She still spat up on AR milk. On the days when we had hoped it was the answer to everything, that was deflating — which is exactly why it is worth knowing in advance that it is a laundry intervention.

What changed for us

Thicker milk through the same teat is a harder feed. We spent a stretch convinced she had gone off her milk when the real problem was that she was working too hard to get it out.

If a baby starts fighting the bottle shortly after you change to a thicker milk, look at the teat before you look at the milk again. A slightly faster flow, or a teat rated for the thicker formulas, is often the whole fix.

We went through several milks in a fortnight at one point, chasing an improvement, and by the end we genuinely could not say what she was reacting to. That is the trap.

One change at a time. Give it about a week unless something is clearly wrong. Write down the date and what changed.

Change one thing at a time

We did ask about giving part of a feed as ordinary milk and part as AR, to get some of the effect without all of it. The right answer was to ask her doctor rather than work out a ratio ourselves, and that is what we did.

The same goes for mixing in a thickener of your own, adding cereal to a bottle, or making an AR milk up more concentrated than the tin says. Formula is made to a specific dilution for a reason.