Baby's breath smells like chlorine

Anonymous
Our 8 month old who had previously been sleeping through the night since 4 months suddenly has started waking several times/night and SCREAMING. This has been going on for 4 weeks. I have noticed that when she wakes in the middle of the night, her breath smells like Chlorine. She has reflux and is on Zantac 3x/day. I have taken her into the pediatrician twice for exams and my doc is unimpressed and tells us to let her "cry it out" I am not opposed to cry it out (been there done that with 2 other kids...) but this seems different. She seems like she is in pain and the breath thing is strange. I am calling a peds gastro tomorrow, but wanted to see if anyone had a similar experience...
Anonymous
The only odd breath odor thing I've heard is that people with diabetes can have an almost fruity chemical smell to their breath. Is it possibly like that? It's definitely worth checking out with a doc.
Anonymous
Are you only smelling it at night?

Is she formula fed? My water smells like chlorine lately so if she is ff, with reflux, that might be the smell...
Anonymous
that would be the stomach acid. i remember that smell quite distinctly from when my son had reflux. sounds like your pediatrician needs a swift kick and your zantac dose needs to be upped. good luck with the GI doc ... hope your sweetie gets to feeling better soon <hugs> elevate the head of the crib if you can, maybe that will help.
Anonymous
Are you wrong about the smell. My son's breath smells like acetone when he is starving. It took him seeing a metabolic specialist to get that information. He has an eating disorder and will regularly starve himself. I thought it was Alcohol, but it was ketones.
Anonymous
fishy breath means kidney disease.
Anonymous
Okay, OP, this is going to sound weird, but try googling baby breath smell. My DD's breath smells bad (not like chlorine, or fish, or sweets) but just like bad breath, and I couldn't find anything in the standard baby books about it, so I turned to Dr. Google and learned as PPs have noted that there are some medical problems that do have associated smells. Some of the descriptions are pretty specific, so you might try running through the descriptions of the smells and seeing if they fit.
Anonymous
It's stomach acid. Reflux is more painful at night. She is waking because she is in pain. Cry it out is NOT recommended for kids with reflux. Your Zantac dose needs to be upped or she needs to be on a PPI. Your ped is an ass.

In the meantime you could try giving her over the counter Cherry Mylanta Supreme (or the CVS version) and I'm betting she will magically sleep for hours. Only do the Cherry Supreme version as the others have aluminum. CMS was the standard treatment for reflux before the new drugs came on the market, it's very safe. Our GI told us to give 5ml as needed for breakthough pain, our DD was on Prevacid.

Zantac definitely needs to be upped as weight increases, it's also notorious for suddenly becoming ineffective. Hope you were able to reach a GI.
Anonymous
Stomach acid is primarily HCl (ie hydrochloric acid) and electrolytes (ie NaCl and KCl). As you can see, that means there are a lot of Cl (ie chlorine) running around. So the smell is most likely gastric acid coming up.
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