How to Help a Baby with Reflux Sleep at Night

Guaranteed ways to help a baby with reflux sleep at night

From my own personal experience I can offer some advice on how to help a baby with reflux sleep at night, even all night long! Granted it won’t happen straight away but there are some things you can do. If you are losing your mind thinking you will never get a few hours sleep again this post is for you!! I did it with a toddler on board too so it is very possible no matter how busy you are!

My whole aim is to help you get acid reflux babies sleeping all through the night! Please find my tips on how to help a baby sleep through the night below!

Tips on how to help a baby with reflux sleep at night

• One of the most important things is actually diagnosing the reflux! Sometimes it can be mistaken for hunger or colic. I know when my baby boy started crying every few hours I initially thought he was hungry [by the way overfeeding makes reflux worse 🙁 ]. After feeding, he seemed in pain so I then assumed he had milk intolerance. Both of these were wrong as he in fact had reflux. Granted he did not vomit as much as other reflux babies I knew but he still brought up after every feed, especially if he was put down to sleep in his crib. Let us face it, all infants go for a nap post feed so this is when I noticed something was wrong. He cried and cried and eventually vomited before settling. I decided I needed some guidance on how to help baby reflux because with a 16 month old I was getting weary! One of my best solutions was the use of certain toys. I have previously written about toys to help baby reflux stop fast and you can check it out below:- TOYS TO HELP BABY REFLUX STOP FAST
• When you know your baby has reflux you need to implement a few strategies to keep the post feed vomiting at bay. Before putting my infant down for a nap or to bed at night I followed a few steps. These were a godsend and are how to help a baby with reflux sleep at night!
• I keep my son upright in either my arms or his bouncer/swing for 45 minutes before putting him into his crib. Granted sometimes he fell asleep here and then I just transferred him. I also elevate him in his crib so that he is not lying flat!  In my opinion this is the single most important thing to help baby reflux for sleep! DO NOT PUT A REFLUX BABY STRAIGHT TO BED AFTER A FEED!

Summary of How To Help Baby Reflux for Sleep

1. Correct diagnosis, i.e. not hunger or milk intolerance.
2. Small feeds initially as opposed to large volume – do not overfeed even if baby cries lots!
3. Frequent winding/burping
4. Keep baby elevated as long as possible post feed and before nap, also elevate crib!
5. Anti-reflux milks can help as can milk thickeners. I did not use either so cannot comment.
6. Introduce solids at 6 months [cuts out reflux or reduces it massively :)]
7. If no improvement see Doctor

Please remember a reflux baby is like other newborn babies, who need some degree of sleep training to help them sleep until morning. PS I am not an expert just a Mom with experience of baby reflux!