Part Deux
*You can read part one here
We left off with me wanting desperately to fix my poor kid, and fix him I tried!! I tried EVERYTHING! Different feeding positions, different feeding techniques. Gas drops, gripe water, chewing prunes 50 times, the swing, the happiest baby on the block book, EVERY possible book!! Inside, outside, google fussy baby, google screaming baby, google I WANT TO DIE, BABY WON'T STOP SCREAMING, stand on my fucking head and clap my feet, but nothing seemed to help. I gave up dairy, soy, peanuts and gluten. Shit I even went on a total elimination diet and ate nothing but rice, squash, apples, pears, potatoes and chicken for 10 days. Yes, you read that right, I ate CHICKEN for the first time in over 13 years and no, I did not like it thankyouverymuch.
As you can imagine, after each failure I felt more and more like one myself. I was incredibly discouraged and found myself wanting to cry all day long with the baby and there were days I did.
I know I am rambling but I find it really hard to explain how it feels day in and day out. Let me try to paint a picture. Imagine you landed the job of a lifetime. You are completely elated and can't wait to begin. Sure it is going to be a challenge, but you are overjoyed. The first few weeks start off kind of rough, but you expect that, you are just starting out, after all.
Weeks pass and instead of getting easier your job is only getting harder. More and more demands are being made on you and to make matter worse, your boss is a BITCH. She calls you at all hours of night to yell at you and tell you what a shitty job you are doing and how you aren't meeting her needs. But at the end of each conversation, she sweetens up, smiles, and encourages you to try again tomorrow.
Day breaks and you wake up feeling positive. Today I'm going to nail it! Today my boss will be proud of me! You take a deep breath and walk in. Five minutes later your boss is already riding your ass. What, you haven't had your morning coffee yet? To bad, get to work. You plug along trying to figure out how to please your boss. You try everything, but every attempt is met with criticism and loud reprimand. There is just no pleasing this boss of yours!!
At the end of a few weeks time you are over it, you want out. You decide that you are going to quit your job and decide to have a talk with your boss about it. You try to explain how hard you are working and how desperately you want to do a good job but for some reason you just aren't cut out to be her employee. You try to quit but guess what...YOU CAN'T QUIT...CAN'T. QUIT. You have to get up and do it all over again...FOREVER.
You try to talk to people about the struggle of your new job, but all they seem to do is reassure you that it is going to get better. Of course you know that it is eventually going to get better, but when you are in it 24 hours a day their kind words only serve to MOCK YOU.
Is this giving you even the slightest idea? I didn't think so...
So at this point we thought we were simply dealing with a high needs, colicky baby. That this was something he would just outgrow. We had no idea that he had something called silent reflux...the devil, the enemy.
I had never even heard of reflux in infants but with all the googing I had been doing, it kept popping up. Interested, I found myself reading more and more about it and the more I researched the more I thought it sounded like my baby. Gulping with a painful look on the face, wet sounding burps, frequent hiccups, sudden burst of painful crying, painful wake ups from sleep or poor sleeping habits, poor feeding habits, neck or back arching during or after feeding, excessive fussiness, crying or colic, demands to be carried constantly...this IS my baby.
Armed with this new information, I made a doctors appointment for Caches to be checked out. Big surprise, we have a pediatrician who is a little bit alternative with his medicine practice so he suggested we try a few homeopathic remedies before starting Caches on medication for the problem. We tried, we failed, we still had a baby who was up all night and screaming all day.
The next week I called my pediatrician again to explain that things were not improving and requested a referral to a pediatric gastroenterologist, but when I mentioned the problem the nurse explained to me how babies have more reflux these days due to toxins in our diet and suggested I give him some fennel tea and just sit and relax with him. I SNAPPED...I totally lost my shit with this poor sweet hippie nurse.
Through tears I told her that I was aware that toxins were bad for baby but that we have next to NONE in our house, that I eat mostly organic, that I was not trying one more freaking kind of tea. I also told her that I'd love to relax with my baby but I CAN'T SIT AND RELAX BECAUSE HE WILL NOT HOLD STILL!! HE IS FUCKING MISERABLE.
For a moment I felt like Sally Field in Steel Magnolias. JUST GIVE MY SON THE DRUGS!!! She gave me the referral.
Long story short we saw the specialist and Caches was put on Zantac. After about a week of no improvement he was switched to Prilosec and we are FINALLY seeing some improvement. He has good days and bad days and so do I. Sometimes I am positive and take it all in stride but there are days when I get so frustrated that could literally scream, and have. Those are the days when the only thing keeping me from running away is the thought that in a few months I can eat ice cream and a real fucking cookie!!!
So where we stand I am still eating no dairy, soy, peanuts or gluten until his reflux is under control and he is still generally unpleasant, but compared to how he used to be we are leaps and bounds ahead.
I should probably go back and edit this post, but I don't have the time and if I wait for time it won't get posted for another week so please excuse my writing as of late. The baby ate my brain. I am still hoping to get back into the swing of things and post more often and maybe, just maybe they will start making sense!!
Thanks for bearing with me...
We left off with me wanting desperately to fix my poor kid, and fix him I tried!! I tried EVERYTHING! Different feeding positions, different feeding techniques. Gas drops, gripe water, chewing prunes 50 times, the swing, the happiest baby on the block book, EVERY possible book!! Inside, outside, google fussy baby, google screaming baby, google I WANT TO DIE, BABY WON'T STOP SCREAMING, stand on my fucking head and clap my feet, but nothing seemed to help. I gave up dairy, soy, peanuts and gluten. Shit I even went on a total elimination diet and ate nothing but rice, squash, apples, pears, potatoes and chicken for 10 days. Yes, you read that right, I ate CHICKEN for the first time in over 13 years and no, I did not like it thankyouverymuch.
As you can imagine, after each failure I felt more and more like one myself. I was incredibly discouraged and found myself wanting to cry all day long with the baby and there were days I did.
I know I am rambling but I find it really hard to explain how it feels day in and day out. Let me try to paint a picture. Imagine you landed the job of a lifetime. You are completely elated and can't wait to begin. Sure it is going to be a challenge, but you are overjoyed. The first few weeks start off kind of rough, but you expect that, you are just starting out, after all.
Weeks pass and instead of getting easier your job is only getting harder. More and more demands are being made on you and to make matter worse, your boss is a BITCH. She calls you at all hours of night to yell at you and tell you what a shitty job you are doing and how you aren't meeting her needs. But at the end of each conversation, she sweetens up, smiles, and encourages you to try again tomorrow.
Day breaks and you wake up feeling positive. Today I'm going to nail it! Today my boss will be proud of me! You take a deep breath and walk in. Five minutes later your boss is already riding your ass. What, you haven't had your morning coffee yet? To bad, get to work. You plug along trying to figure out how to please your boss. You try everything, but every attempt is met with criticism and loud reprimand. There is just no pleasing this boss of yours!!
At the end of a few weeks time you are over it, you want out. You decide that you are going to quit your job and decide to have a talk with your boss about it. You try to explain how hard you are working and how desperately you want to do a good job but for some reason you just aren't cut out to be her employee. You try to quit but guess what...YOU CAN'T QUIT...CAN'T. QUIT. You have to get up and do it all over again...FOREVER.
You try to talk to people about the struggle of your new job, but all they seem to do is reassure you that it is going to get better. Of course you know that it is eventually going to get better, but when you are in it 24 hours a day their kind words only serve to MOCK YOU.
Is this giving you even the slightest idea? I didn't think so...
So at this point we thought we were simply dealing with a high needs, colicky baby. That this was something he would just outgrow. We had no idea that he had something called silent reflux...the devil, the enemy.
I had never even heard of reflux in infants but with all the googing I had been doing, it kept popping up. Interested, I found myself reading more and more about it and the more I researched the more I thought it sounded like my baby. Gulping with a painful look on the face, wet sounding burps, frequent hiccups, sudden burst of painful crying, painful wake ups from sleep or poor sleeping habits, poor feeding habits, neck or back arching during or after feeding, excessive fussiness, crying or colic, demands to be carried constantly...this IS my baby.
Armed with this new information, I made a doctors appointment for Caches to be checked out. Big surprise, we have a pediatrician who is a little bit alternative with his medicine practice so he suggested we try a few homeopathic remedies before starting Caches on medication for the problem. We tried, we failed, we still had a baby who was up all night and screaming all day.
The next week I called my pediatrician again to explain that things were not improving and requested a referral to a pediatric gastroenterologist, but when I mentioned the problem the nurse explained to me how babies have more reflux these days due to toxins in our diet and suggested I give him some fennel tea and just sit and relax with him. I SNAPPED...I totally lost my shit with this poor sweet hippie nurse.
Through tears I told her that I was aware that toxins were bad for baby but that we have next to NONE in our house, that I eat mostly organic, that I was not trying one more freaking kind of tea. I also told her that I'd love to relax with my baby but I CAN'T SIT AND RELAX BECAUSE HE WILL NOT HOLD STILL!! HE IS FUCKING MISERABLE.
For a moment I felt like Sally Field in Steel Magnolias. JUST GIVE MY SON THE DRUGS!!! She gave me the referral.
Long story short we saw the specialist and Caches was put on Zantac. After about a week of no improvement he was switched to Prilosec and we are FINALLY seeing some improvement. He has good days and bad days and so do I. Sometimes I am positive and take it all in stride but there are days when I get so frustrated that could literally scream, and have. Those are the days when the only thing keeping me from running away is the thought that in a few months I can eat ice cream and a real fucking cookie!!!
So where we stand I am still eating no dairy, soy, peanuts or gluten until his reflux is under control and he is still generally unpleasant, but compared to how he used to be we are leaps and bounds ahead.
I should probably go back and edit this post, but I don't have the time and if I wait for time it won't get posted for another week so please excuse my writing as of late. The baby ate my brain. I am still hoping to get back into the swing of things and post more often and maybe, just maybe they will start making sense!!
Thanks for bearing with me...
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