My 27 weeker had severe acid reflux issues. she used to throw up 10 times a day(no spit up) all over me mostly. but she was still eating well and gained up to 16 pound 5 ounces. around 4-5 months of age she started to refuse all the feeds which is unusual for her. so we decided to take her aid her to our pediatrician who checked and said her throat looks red and it could be some viral infection. no treatment needed, we brought her home hoping that she will start eating better as the throat gets cleared.

After 2 weeks we took her to the pediatrician(this time a different doc from the the group) who said it could be FEEDING AVERSION(oral aversion) and didn't guide us what to do. at that time my child was getting Axid 15 mg for the reflux, we asked the doctor to change the dosage of the medicine according to her weight.He increased her dosage. we came back home not knowing what to do next.
Decided to go to a GI specialist,the GI specialist spent very little time and said let us change the medication to Prevacid and Carafate which seem to be working better according to them. she got that for a month and still no improvement in eating, went back to GI again with the same issue and she said if she take around 350 ml a day that is fine.(she didn't think about my child loosing weight with that amount.) and she ordered endoscopy with biopsy and barium swallow study. we did both and both are normal.since the test was done a month after starting the prevacid and carafate ,the ulcer might have already healed if there was any. now after all these test the GI didn't even call me.
Sine it was going on for two month and nobody seem to care about it, I went ahead and changed my pediatrician and GI specialist. I'm glad I did that. she has seen by speech therapist also. nothing seem to be working.I did get some tips from them. there is no treatment for it, you can only try different ways to feed them.I gave tube feeding to my child for some time, the nasal congestion was getting worse , i decided to pull the tube out and try feeding her by mouth. I mostly feed her when she almost go to sleep( just before the deep sleep) I used a thickner also. I made sure that my child didn't aspirate food, some time she did cough and i took her and pat her on the back.So now she takes around 20 ounces a day with very little fight even when she is awake.
Meanwhile my good GI doctor did a lot of test, including sono head, heart, abdomen, everything came out normal. we just wanted to make sure there is nothing else going on with the baby.I tried different things, changed to different nipple sizes, bottles,singing, tv, playing, everything. the speech therapist told me never force feed them because they will fight more and not eat at all.
Honestly i don't know what is working since I tried different things. keep your patients and never be stressed when feeding the baby as you can transfer the anxiety to the child. try to make eating a joyful experience that is what i will say, because in the past there was pain when they ate, so the child associates pain with feeding. tell me who will want to eat if you eat and throw up 10 times a day, and also it causes pain when eating due to the ulcers in the esophagus(the food passes through the esophagus to the stomach. So try to study your child and even let them have some fun activities in between eating.