Taming the twitchy sphincter

After months of changing Is's clothes and our clothes and spot-cleaning the carpet and furnishings multiple times per day, we finally decided that perhaps we should take the doctor's offer to prescribe something for her prolific "spitting up." I didn't want to put her on any medications unless medical professionals felt it was absolutely necessary. However, her weight gain had slowed precipitously, and we worried that perhaps she wasn't getting enough calories.

She has gastroesophageal reflux (GER), which basically means that the little sphincter muscle between the esophagus and stomach relaxes at the wrong times, and the food and milk come back up. Most babies with GER outgrow this problem by 12 or 18 months. We can't wait for that day. Until then, there's Zantac, and it has helped tremendously in the two weeks she's been taking it.