Baby Acid Reflux?

This past week, our almost 2 month old baby girl started doing something odd. She started refusing to eat during the middle of her feeding! Prior to this she was a good eater...about 4-4.5 ounces per feeding. But all of a sudden she'll only eat about 1-2 ounces and starts crying. She'll push the bottle nipple out of her mouth and scream...turning her head and refusing to eat. If I sit her up on my lap and hold her head to my chest, she'll stop crying. But when we try to feed her again, she'll scream and refuse the bottle. Needless to say, my wife and I are both perplexed and concerned by this.

I've been doing some research and one possible cause I've come across is that she might have infant acid reflux. Apparently, acid reflux in babies is a fairly common problem. Basically, this occurs when the stomach acids regurgitate back up the esophagus causing pain...this is what adults call heartburn.

They say that most babies will outgrow this problem at 6-9 months of age but the more severe cases may need medication prescribed by a doctor. I don't think our daughter has a sever case (although I suppose at this point, I don't really know if she has acid reflux at all). She's still eating and having wet and poopy diapers, but it just concerns us when she screams like that and refuses to eat.

Based on what I've found out about baby acid reflux, here are some things that my wife and I are going to try.

Hold our baby more upright when feeding. We normally don't lay our baby flat when feeding her, but we're going to try holding her even more upright during feedings. This is supposed to allow gravity to help keep the stomach acids down.

Keep our baby upright for at least 20 minutes or so after feeding. I will admit that we usually don't do this, especially at night. We're so tired during the night-time feedings that as soon as our baby is done eating, we put her back to bed. From now on, we'll hold her upright for awhile before putting her back in her crib.

Feed our baby less milk, but more often. The idea here is that less milk in the stomach will be easier/faster for the baby to digest...therefore, less chance for acid reflux. However, this will mean more feedings. And that could be difficult, particularly at night.

Change our baby's sleeping position. Going back to the idea that gravity will help keep the stomach acid down, the head-end of the crib can be propped up to allow a slight incline. I've also read that even though the safest recommendation is to put your baby to sleep on her back, sleeping on the left side might help the baby with acid reflux. Apparently in this position the stomach inlet is higher than the outlet, which will help keep the contents down.

We'll be trying these recommendations and hopefully things will get better.

If you have any other suggestions for help with baby acid reflux, please post them in the comments.