Question
My baby is now 10 months old and has been vomiting frequently since he was 4 months old. He doesn’t have much appetite and eats very little. Moreover, his weight has not increased; he has been 16 pounds since 7 months old, and he is very thin. What’s going on?
Answer
When a child is sick, vomiting is one of the most common symptoms. Vomiting not only causes significant discomfort to the child but also affects their eating habits. Parents are often very anxious about this, so they should learn to identify the cause of vomiting. The most important causes are: 1. Incorrect feeding or diet: Overfeeding during the neonatal period, inappropriate milk formula, and swallowing a large amount of air while drinking milk. Infants eating larger amounts of food or difficult-to-digest food at one time. 2. Abnormal digestive function: Systemic infectious diseases, such as upper respiratory infections, bronchitis, pneumonia, and sepsis, can lead to high fever, nausea, loss of appetite, and often accompanied by vomiting. 3. Gastrointestinal infections: Diseases such as gastritis, enteritis, dysentery, and appendicitis can cause reflexive vomiting due to local irritation, accompanied by nausea, abdominal pain, and diarrhea.