sweet baby j

I have to tell you that my sweet Baby J is as delicious as ever. I could gobble the grins right up. He loves me. I'm telling you that little man loves his mama. Smart kid, that one!

He's got tummy troubles, though. He has been a great sport trying to eat solids. They just seem to give us some really, really bad nights. No matter what the food (except Cheerios!). Not EVERYthing is supposed to be "gassy", but nobody told him that. His reflux-spitting decreased when he learned to sit up, but it didn't go away. Now it's just food colored in the evenings. Between upset tummies that wake him far too often for me to remember any more and the rounds of teething that follow a distinct 2-hour-wake-up pattern, it's been pretty bad around here recently.

I would spend several nights giving him various solids at dinner--avoiding anything complex or that included dairy, eggs or bananas (he's allergic to bananas!!--what is it with my allergic children?!). After 5 nights or so of difficulty, we'd take a solids hiatus and go to just mommy's "milks" as we call it. And his tummy would begin to settle down, nights would become more routine and the painful cries would ease. Then, I'd hesitantly try again and the cycle would start over once more.

Last week, I finally took him to the doctor because I started to worry when the king of all bad nights hit; he was up way more than usual and for a long stretch once. Each of these wake-ups was not play time for him, but a cry of hurt and even a difficulty nursing--our normal night routine includes just nursing if he wakes up and then he'll sack back out for a while again.

They could find nothing wrong. Even the ear he keeps grabbing is completely fine. It must be his tummy. So, they upped his Zantac dose and added Maalox to the evening routine that already included Zantac, gas drops, teething tablets...you name it (I even tried Tylenol the other night, but that just makes him feel good and playful). They even talked about Reglan, but I've head "controversy" that kept me from making that switch. I am thinking I need to research it a bit more, perhaps, since that is the only drug that can help the stomach empty properly which might be the issue. In the meantime, he responds well to the increased meds.

And, I personally decided to ease way back on the food for him. I fully believe he is nutritionally fine with breast milk until a year old, so I'm going to go much more slowly with this. After several days of no solids, I gave him rice cereal and pears for breakfast instead of trying dinner. It didn't go any better -- making for a bad day versus a bad night -- and I've decided that aside from Cheerios, solids are out for now. For some reason, they are not working for him yet. Perhaps I'll try again in a few weeks, but other than that, I'm out of ideas.