Sunday, September 02, 2007

I bet you I can guess your weight...

I seriously feel like I'm walking down the arcade at a fair. All those barkers hollering and telling me they can guess my weight or I get a prize. All I need is to pick one and see how close they get. Sadly this feeling is over my child and his health. Guessing or betting on a solution for my son is not what I call even close to fun. In fact it makes mamma bear pretty damn mad. After Oz woke us at 1am with a blood curdling scream while trying to poop and two more like that this morning, we went ahead to the ER in the hopes that they could give him a stool softener. The water was definately helping him to have more poops per day, but the stuff is hard as a rock.

The ER staff was nice and put us away from all the other walking germ factories and we didn't have to wait too long either. Basically nope there is no stool softener for an infant. The doc did say to give him 1 tsp of corn syrup in 3 oz of water as a laxative/softener. What gets me though and it wasn't her fault so I'm not angry at her as much as I am irritated with the situation as a whole, is that we were given YET ANOTHER formula to try. This time its the lactose free crap. She said if after a week it didn't help, to then go to Soy. Now I think I understand that Aaron was being a total smart ass in his comment on the previous post. Oh and if the soy doesn't work then she wants me to get the $25 a small fucking can nutraginamin stuff.

So what the hell? Is the kid really lactose intolerant? Does that mean he will be lactose intolerant for life? Oh and according to the doc the pimples on his face that are now spreading down his neck and arms is actually and allergic reaction to something. So we had to change his baby bath stuff too.

So what my kid's gonna be Milhouse? Allergic to everything? I mean come on I couldn't breastfeed for an entire 6 months but he got 5 weeks at least. I would have hoped that those 5 weeks would at least help him to not be allergic to breathing...sigh

ETA - I just read several articles that state that lactose usually isn't the cause and well lactose is better than the corn syrup they put in the lactose free formulas. This really kills me - seriously.

5 comments:

Rachelle Jones said...

I wish I could help, or be there to give you a 2 hour break.

(BTW I would reccomend, if you can get one. ASAP!)

We too ran this course, with the first borne. He had 4 Pediatricians. Nothing was ever "solidified"....

I will say prayers BIG ONES!!

REST when you can, because sleep deprivation can play tricks on you.

Linda said...

I am SO feeling your pain right now. We ran SO parallel to what you're going through. Honestly. I managed five painful months of nursing - painful for both my son AND I. He had ALL the same problems. (except we stayed with only ONE pediatrician). And let me tell you, lactose-intolerance CAN go away. Because at one year, I gave my son milk...and he took to it like a champ. FULLY "leaded" milk (that would be whole milk, lol). And to this day, he drinks several cupfuls a day. At 3 1/2 he still gets a 10 oz sippy filled in the morning...then he has a cup in the fridge that he gets out all day and I just keep filling it. He's got gorgeous little teeth (unlike his sister who gave up milk at 2 and barely touches it now). And he doesn't have poop issues, no allergy to it.

funnily enough, he developed allergies to strawberries, tomatoes and we have just discovered that he's allergic to bee stings. I am hoping that he outgrows the strawberry/tomato allergies.

Butterfly Wife said...

I have no words of wisdom to offer, just a sympathetic ear. Here is a hug. I'm with Army Wife, take a break if you can, do something nice for yourself.

And BTW, Oz cannot be a Milhouse, he is already a milbrat. ;-)

Anonymous said...

I was diagnosed as allergic to the world once! I have the paperwork to prove it!!! Hang in there. Hugs and open ears!

Aaron said...

I was only being a little smartass on that comment. Now you see what I was talking about.

Did I ever tell you about our experience with changing the formula?

We took Cole to the doctor because he'd developed a habit of choking on his bottle (he still does it), and he started coughing a lot. One night, he suddenly woke up gasping for air and it scared us too much to ignore. Of course, there were no other symptoms and the doctor saw nothing.

The doctor has Cole X-rayed, mostly because I think he wanted to scare us out of ever coming back with an issue like this again. Have you ever seen an infant chest X-Ray? They put the baby in a plastic case that's roughly baby shaped and the poor kid SCREAMS his head off while the nurse fumbles around for the next ten minutes.

The X-Ray showed zip, so the doctor gave us that rice formula you're using. Only, when he gave it to us it was still new. You couldn't get it in the store! We were given three bottles and instructions to come back for more when we needed it (in roughly six hours).

A week later, Cole was suddenly fussy. He cried all day for four days, but we couldn't find anything wrong with him. We sure as hell weren't going to the doctor again if he had no symptoms. After four days he got a fever (at night) and we took him to urgent care, where they found out he had an ear infection. They numbed his ear and he instantly became himself again.

The next day Cole was screaming again, in spite of the antibiotics and the pain meds. Shortly after office hours for regular doctors, his eardrum ruptured and all the nastiness you can imagine poured out. He started smiling again right away. I knew that the rupture wasn't a serious problem, because I've been through it myself. We took him back to urgent care anyway because I wanted to be sure that we didn't need to do anything special about it. They changed our drugs, but that's about it.

After the ear infection cleared, Cole's coughing went away. We think that this may be an early warning for us in the future.