Our Battle

After Matthew was born, it didn't take long to realize something was not right with his digestive system. In his first 24 hours he had over 10 bowel movements. He was nursing and also getting a formula supplement. Our first thought (as well as the nurse's) was that he has a milk sensitivity. Abby is milk protein intolerant so it wasn't a total shock. He was switched to soy formula and I stopped consuming dairy. Switching to the soy formula didn't seem to do the trick completely because after I got him home he was still having bowel movements 20+ times on some days. I continued to nurse him and supplement until he was a few weeks old and then gave up nursing because his poor little bottom was so horribly covered in bright red diaper rash from all the poopy diapers. I tried pumping until I could get him figured out and get all the dairy out of my system. It just proved to be way to difficult trying to manage a preschooler, a newborn and a pump. Giving up breastfeeding was, BY FAR, the hardest decision I have made as a mother. The guilt is so incredibly overwhelming when you feel like you are failing your child. It is still difficult for me to think about 5 months later. Every time he has been sick or hard to comfort I feel that guilt racing through my veins, even knowing what I know now (no matter how long I avoided dairy, he would not have tolerated breast milk)

When he was 2 weeks old I started noticing that he was choking every time I laid him down. He also began having trouble sleeping would only sleep 5-20 minutes before he would wake up, turn bright red, choke and gag. I recognized immediately that he was suffering from acid reflux. His pediatrician noticed the reflux was so bad that his throat was red and irritated from stomach acid coming up and burning it. She put him on Zantac. To my surprise it did nothing for him. Abby also had reflux but nothing even close to as severe as Matthew and she did wonderfully on Zantac, although she did need it until she was 13 months old. We moved him to Prevacid and continued to have problems. By the time he was 6 weeks old he was refusing to eat more than an ounce or two at a time and was beginning to fall off his weight curve quickly.

I won't put you through all the painful details of what my poor little man has been through. I will do my best to summarize....5 formulas, 3 medicines, 3 thickeners (for his formula), 1 upper GI, 1 swallow study and two pediatric GI appointments later we finally have things a little more under control. He ended up on an elemental formula, or as we like to refer to it, liquid gold. It is an extremely expensive amino acid based formula that contains no protein chains for his body to break down. He is finally getting some sleep and I rarely hear him swallowing his reflux anymore. We recently tried decreasing his medicine dose and he began having problems eating again immediately. So, our magic combo seems to be the right dose of PPI medicine (decreases the amount of acid in his stomach) and the formula along with a thickener that weighs it down in his stomach. I don't see him being able to go without the medicine until sometime between 12 and 18 months.

I am so relieved to be to the point we are. It has been incredibly difficult to see my baby suffering and in pain, not knowing when we would figure out what he needed to get some relief. Many prayers have been answered and for that I am grateful.