Hi christina. Your symptoms are very common in GERD, but if you can't take anything stronger at this time, you may have to suffer until you stop breastfeeding. It would be beneficial for the doctor to scope you and see how much damage has occurred from the GERD. However, this test requires sedation. Maybe you could talk to your doctor about a 24 hr pH monitor which is a tube inserted through the nose and goes down to the stomach to measure the amount of reflux occuring over a day. The other test you should consider is esophageal manometry which is another tube going through your nose and the nurse stops it at several points along your esophagus to measure the contractions of the esophagus during swallowing, and then they can measure the actual pressure of the lower esophageal sphincter to determine if it's staying closed properly or not (mine was hypotonic and causing me to reflux even with medication). Both of these tests are quite uncomfortable to go through, but I survived and I'm a wimp! Neither of these tests requires sedation so there'd be no effect on your breast milk. In fact, I was begging for sedation and was told that it wasn't part of the procedure. The only thing that's used is that the tubing is coated with lidocaine so it will numb your sinuses as it passes through to make the test more tolerable. If test results come back as abnormal, then your doc can discuss future treatments.
Just some ideas if you don't want to quit breastfeeding at this time. However, if stronger medication is what you need, you may have to consider giving up breastfeeding.
Good luck and keep me posted,
Katie G
Throat pain / GERD?
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