I haven’t updated everyone on your situation in a few weeks so we have a lot of catching up to do. Let’s start with the biggest change to our feeding journey so far. As of February 4 you are now only drinking Nutramigen formula and no longer getting any of my breast milk. It was not an easy choice for mommy, but I do not regret the choice that I have made. I do not feel as guilty as I was expecting to feel, but I have felt a lot of other emotions that I was not anticipating. (My emotions have been extremely up and down the past few weeks and I have anxiety about EVERYTHING) I just feel completely replaceable. That thought hadn’t even crossed my mind until I stopped pumping. Anyone can feed you your bottle of formula now, and I no longer contribute anything special to your bottles. That makes mommy sad. I do personally feel better and healthier since I’ve gone back to eating a regular diet, but that makes me worry even more about your diet. I know now that my breast milk must not have been providing you with very much nutrition at all. If I couldn’t stop losing weight, what made me think that you would be able to gain weight from what I provided you? I almost feel guiltier now for providing breast milk for as long as I did than for deciding to stop providing breast milk.
So far we have seen an allergic reaction to every solid food that you have tried. This is very frustrating and scary for mommy and daddy. You are five and a half months old and should be well on your way to having solids become a regular part of your diet. I don’t want you to be behind on things, but we just don’t have a choice right now. So here is how your solid food adventures have gone:
Rice cereal: We tried rice cereal for 4 days in a row. The first day we mixed some up in a bowl and fed you about two spoonfuls just to see how you would react. You didn’t like it. We could tell by your facial expressions! It was funny and you made mommy and daddy laugh a lot at first. A few hours later, though, we weren’t laughing anymore. Your tummy was so upset. You screamed. You needed changed every hour with diapers full of stool. It was just like how it used to be except we weren’t seeing any blood in your stool. We weren’t sure if this was just the normal process of a baby getting used to a new food, or if it was an abnormal reaction. Everyone says that a little rice cereal in a baby’s bottle before bed will help them sleep through the night. Well it did the complete opposite for you baby. I literally would put a pinch of cereal in the bottle that you had right before bed only. You wouldn’t sleep for more than three hours at a time, and you would wake up starving because everything you were eating was just coming right back out. It was like we had gone back to how you felt when you were a month old. I had forgotten just how bad it had been in the early days of your life. Things are so much better now, and I don’t want them to go back to how they used to be. I wanted to keep trying rice cereal to see if your body would get used to it, but after 4 days of you just feeling horrible, we decided to stop. You had very bad diarrhea for about a week and a half after we stopped feeding you rice cereal. We had a few ruined outfits and we had to change your crib sheets almost every night. It was messy, and it was not fun. I don’t think we will ever try rice cereal again.
Peas: About a week after we stopped seeing the diarrhea from the rice cereal, we decided to try peas. We tried peas for three days in a row. You LOVED peas! You couldn’t wait for that spoon to get to your mouth. It was so fun to feed you and see your reaction to this taste. I was glad to see you getting some enjoyment from a flavor. We only fed you a few spoonfuls of peas trying to be as cautious as possible about a new food experience. You quickly developed a rash on your cheeks and chin. You have very sensitive skin, so I thought that maybe the food had just irritated your face. Then you also developed a bright red rash in your diaper area that was different from your diaper rash. You have had diaper rash with yeast since you were a month old so sadly diaper rash is part of your daily life. I know and am very familiar with your normal diaper rash so I can 100% say that the rash you have experienced in your diaper area after trying solid foods has not been normal for you. Peas gave you diarrhea and we continued to see it for 2-3 days after we stopped giving you peas. You had some strange dry spots on your body after you ate peas as well. I thought maybe this was just because the weather was cold and dry, but I always put lotion on your skin multiple times a day. It wasn’t normal for you so I did some investigating, and dry spots can be a sign of an allergic reaction.
Carrots: You didn’t care for the taste of carrots and weren’t very receptive to trying them so we only gave them to you once. You developed a rash on your face, in your diaper area, and you had diarrhea for 2-3 days. I didn’t notice any dry spots from the carrots.
Green Beans: We tried green beans this past Sunday night. You weren’t that interested. I have to wonder now if you just knew that it wouldn’t make you feel good so you were trying to tell me that you didn’t want to eat it. I should have listened to you better baby. You are only five and a half months old, but you are definitely beginning to figure things out. I promise I will listen to you better from now on. Mommy was just so set on finding something you could eat because I want you to have a more balanced diet since I’m still not a big fan of the ingredients in your formula. Immediately after you ate green beans, you developed a rash on your face and a bright red rash in your entire diaper area. I mean it looked like you were on fire down there. We of course saw diarrhea and you had dry spots on your body again. Monday morning we experienced something new, though. I put you on the changing table to get you dressed for the day. Everything seemed normal. Then you started high pitched wheezing like you just couldn’t breathe. Your eyes got big like you were terrified. You looked straight at me like you knew you needed help. I quickly scooped you up and started patting your back. The wheezing didn’t last long, but it scared you. You sobbed uncontrollably. I just wanted to get you calmed down and make sure that you were okay. Once you finally calmed down you had pretty much exhausted yourself. You fell asleep, and I’m not going to lie, I (probably unnecessarily) worried you wouldn’t wake back up. Mommy was scared, but honestly it didn’t phase me as much as it probably should have. I didn’t immediately call the doctor or anything. We’ve dealt with so much that I feel like I’m immune to things that should cause me concern. I can’t say for sure what the wheezing was from, but it definitely got me thinking about how scary all of this food allergy stuff could potentially be.
We already had a doctor’s appointment scheduled for Tuesday afternoon to do a checkup on your head circumference and check your weight. I called the office on Monday just to verify that we would be seeing the doctor at that appointment. I went in there armed with my concerns and questions. The good news from your appointment is that your head has not grown at all since your last appointment, but your body has. This means that you are not so disproportionate now. Thankfully, we don’t need to get a CT scan of your head or anything like that at this time. You have also gained about two pounds since your appointment in January. This is great news. It makes me feel better about the decision to exclusively formula feed you. Then it was my turn to voice my concerns to the doctor. She listened, but had an excuse for almost every symptom I brought up. She told me you have sensitive skin, that babies skin gets dry at this time of year, that the diarrhea might mean that your intestines just can’t handle the solids yet, and that the wheezing may have been from some reflux that got caught in your throat. I understand being rational about all of this, and I do realize that sometimes I am irrational about things. But I know your normal baby which means I know when things just aren’t normal as well.
I told the doctor that at this point I think we need to see a specialist. She agreed to discuss with us the option of seeing a GI specialist or allergist, but she would not refer us to one just yet. She wants to wait a month and monitor how you do with just all formula bottles. She doesn’t want us to try any more solids for now. She wants to figure out what your normal stool pattern will be with all formula because we don’t know what that is. A specialist is definitely going to want to know what your “normal” is. We started solids while you were still having breast milk mixed with formula in your bottles so you’ve had a lot going on in your tummy this past month. You are up to about 7-8 diapers a day with stool in them. Usually it’s quite a bit of stool too. As I said earlier, we’ve been going through a lot of outfits and crib sheets this past month. You have a raw bottom with open sores that bleed from your diaper rash. Sometimes when we go to change your diaper, especially after a bath, you arch your back and scream in pain because you don’t want us to touch you or put a diaper back on. We’ve been having completely naked time every night to help you air out. I don’t want constant diaper rash or 7-8 stools to be your normal baby. So I am willing to wait a month to let your tummy calm down a little bit. We’ve put it through a lot the past month. We just weren’t prepared for any of this darling. Mommy read the baby books while she was pregnant. None of your experiences, from your birth until now, were ever mentioned in those books. Maybe mommy should write a new book. One that helps other mothers going through situations not mentioned in those widely accepted “normal motherhood experiences” books.
We did have to collect multiple stool samples from you Tuesday night to take back to the doctor’s office for testing. The doctor wants to make sure that there isn’t blood in your stools still. Sometimes blood isn’t visible, but is still present. If the test comes back that blood is still present, we may need to switch your formula. It is very rare, but some babies are allergic to even hypoallergenic formulas. I hope that isn’t the case because I just got everything finalized to get your formula delivered to our house and paid for by insurance, but if we need to try something else then that’s what we will do. We should hear the results today or tomorrow. There is just no way you can be allergic to everything baby. I mean that is so so so so very rare. I guess it’s possible, and really with you nothing should surprise me at this point.
So again we will wait. I’m sure mommy will work herself up with worry over this next month. I’m already paranoid about you getting your hands on a food that you shouldn’t. You try to put EVERYTHING in your mouth and you will soon be mobile. We saw how negatively you reacted to simple vegetables, so I can’t imagine if you ingested something with milk in it! Why does food have to be such a dangerous thing for you? I’m already worrying about how it will be when you are a year and a half old. Everyone around you will get snacks that you won’t be able to eat. How is that going to make you feel? How do you make a one and a half year old understand that they can’t eat something because it will hurt them and potentially be very dangerous for them? How do you make them understand that they are different, but that it’s not a bad thing to be different? I worry that you will need an EpiPen if your food allergies are deemed too dangerous. I worry that your throat will close up due to an allergic reaction and we will lose you. Your 6 month appointment will also be where we need to get tests done to make sure that the hole in your heart has closed up properly so that is just one more thing to worry about. I worry a lot baby. Now we have a whole month ahead of us for mommy to worry.
Sometimes I feel like I’m crazy or overreacting, but then I look at your sweet face and I remember why I’m fighting so hard for you. You are my little girl, and I only want what’s best. On the outside you look fine like a normal healthy baby, but something definitely isn’t right with your insides. I don’t want to settle for your normal to be feeling bad all of the time. There has to be an explanation and there has to be something we can do about it. Mommy will keep trying my sweet baby pie. Don’t you forget, mommy loves you always and forever.
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