A little backstory here...Ellie also had acid reflux as an infant. REALLY bad reflux. Even in the NICU she was known as a "spitter." And not just a little bit of spit up...like her entire bottle would come back up and end up all over you or the floor. Sometimes it was projectile spit up...blech. It was pretty miserable for all of us. Not long after she came home from the hospital, Billy and I were trying to feed Ellie her bottle and both of us were just about to rip our hair out. It was the middle of the night, and Ellie was just screaming and crying and thrashing every time we put the bottle in her mouth. I tried everything I could think of and just couldn't get her to eat. It would take 45 minutes to an hour for her to drink 2 or 3 ounces of formula. I knew something was wrong. No baby should take that long to eat or cry that much. So we saw our pediatrician and it was pretty obvious that she had painful acid reflux. She went on Ranitidine (which is like Zantac, so it helps with the reflux pain) and Reglan (which was for the spit up, since hers was so high in volume and sometimes forceful). After a week or two, we really started to see an improvement. She was still a major spitter, but she was finally a happy spitter. We just accommodated for the spit up problem. I always packed multiple outfits if we were going to be out of the house for more than half an hour, and always had multiple burp cloths and receiving blankets to use for clean up. I stopped giving her the medications somewhere around 6 months (since she didn't seem to really need it anymore) and the spit up ended around 9 months.
Once we came home from the hospital, I quickly realized that Piper was a fussy baby. She had a lot of issues with sleeping, even early on when most babies pretty much sleep all of the time. It took us a good month to really get her in a sleeping routine, and even then she still cried quite a bit. It got so tiring for me to listen to her cry what seemed like all the time, and eventually we just got used to it. I never could figure out why she cried so much, because she was a great eater and never seemed to have any issues with that. She started sleeping through the night, and I thought we had finally gotten in our stride and that things would get better.
About a week and a half ago, she stopped sleeping through the night. At the most, she would sleep 6 hours, but some nights it was 4-5. I thought maybe she was going through a growth spurt and that things would level out after a few days, but it never did. Then she started having feeding issues...arching her back while nursing, crying during and after her feedings. I started to suspect reflux, since those symptoms were very similar to what Ellie had. But I kept thinking, "She's 3 months old, this shouldn't be showing up now all of a sudden." But after a week, I decided to call the doctor and get the nurse's opinion because things weren't getting better.
So I called the nurse and she said it definitely sounded like reflux. We saw the doctor and he concluded the same thing. Apparently, some babies don't show major symptoms until they're several months old. Thankfully, it hasn't influenced her growth...she's gained a pound and a half in the past month (so now she's 13 lbs. 11 oz....our little chunk!). So now Piper is on Ranitidine. I really didn't want her to have to be on medication, but we're already starting to see an improvement so I know it's working.
In one way, it's frustrating because the doctor said that if both of our girls have had painful reflux, it's most likely that any other children we have will also have this problem. Apparently it runs in families. However, at least we know what to look for in the future! =)
The other good thing that has come out of this is that I used to beat myself up over not breastfeeding Ellie, and I used to wonder if she wouldn't have had reflux issues had she been on breast milk instead of formula. Now we know that it wouldn't have mattered, since Piper has it, too. I wish I had bothered to ask the doctor back then when we were going through it with Ellie, because it would have saved me a lot of guilt and frustration.
So anyway, that's where we are right now. It's been a bit challenging, but I'm thankful that she's improving and sleeping better. The past two nights she has slept 8 hours straight, which hasn't happened in quite a while, so you can bet I've been a happy mommy the past two days =). Her demeanor is improving, too. She's smiling and "playing" more than she has in the past couple of weeks, and her naps are much more regular than they were. I feel like we're *finally* starting to move toward a normal routine, which had been a source of frustration for me before I knew what was going on with her. Piper is still a bit more high-maintenance than Ellie was, but I'm just grateful to see my little one acting more comfortable and happy.
And as a random side note....Ellie peed in her potty for the first time today! I was kinda trying to hold her off on that, since I can't really commit to hard core potty training right now (with having another baby, nursing 6 or 7 times a day, etc.) but Ellie was demanding to have her pants taken off so she could sit on the potty, so I gave in haha. Now I can't get her to leave the potty alone. At least she's enthusiastic! =) Ideally, I would love for her to be potty trained, but I just don't know that she's really capable of telling me when she needs to pee, or pulling her pants up and down by herself. She still goes in her diaper during naps, and I just don't want to put all this energy and effort into getting her potty trained if she's just not developmentally ready. Oh well...maybe we'll just have to take the "slow and gradual" approach!
 |
| Piper "playing" (can't believe she's 3 months old already!) |
 |
| Ellie running in my heels (23 months old tomorrow!) |
No comments:
Post a Comment