Our Reflux Experience- Part 1

I thought it was about time I explain what we've been through with Eli's reflux.  I will do a couple of different posts about this because it is a huge topic.

"Isn't reflux just like baby heartburn?" "Oh yah, my kid spit up tons too." "He'll sleep when he's tired." "He just wants his mommy- he's spoiled."

These are all statements people have said to us that showed that many people do not understand the scope of infant reflux, and the continuation of that, called GERD, which is what Eli has.

I'd never heard of infant reflux before Eli was born. When he was born, he seemed like a "normal" healthy baby, besides some immediate weight loss (13% of his body weight) and mild jaundice.  Both of these things resolved by 1 week.  However, when he was 12 days old, he became a mess. On that day, he woke up at 6 AM, cried and fussed all day, and when I finally called the NurseLine at midnight, he had slept a TOTAL of 45 minutes that day. The Nurseline advised us to bring him in, but we thought we'd wait it out and see our pediatrician the next day.  She immediately ordered a battery of blood tests and other tests. Seeing him lay there on the table and squirm and cry and do what we called "griping" was very concerning to her. Oh- the griping. He was 12 days old and already groaning in pain. So when all the tests came back negative, she decided it must be reflux. Now, to be clear- Eli did NOT spit up much. Instead, we would see him retching, as if to vomit, then swallowing (or choking) stuff back down. Anyway, our pediatrician called this "Silent Reflux" and said that while his weight was good, this kind of reflux can be twice as painful because the acid was burning on the way up AND the way down. She put him on Zantac. We went through an Upper GI test when he was 5 weeks old to rule out other problems. Through this time he was NOT improving.

We were unable to EVER put him down on his back (a complication for sleeping!).  He would cry in pain if we put him down. He would arch his back away from me so hard I could hardly hold him. He would cry and fuss through every feeding- leading to feeding sessions taking over an hour at least. He barely napped- he hardly slept at all, which means neither did I.  He was only comfortable being held in certain positions, and he HAD to be held all the time.

Through this time, once again, I want to say that many people did not understand our problems. People seemed to be wondering what the heck was wrong with US. "Just let him cry"- they would say. Well, the more he cried, the more sick he got, and then the more he cried, and the more sick...you get the picture. We couldn't take Eli anywhere- he was too fussy. We couldn't hang out with friends or do anything. I had no idea how I'd ever go back to work. I couldn't put him down long enough to go to the bathroom- how could I make dinner or go anywhere?

We went back to the pediatrician who gave us a prescription for Prilosec.  Eli was now 6 weeks old, and it had just been a terrible 6 weeks.  We weren't able to show off our wonderful new baby to anyone, and he was a complete wreck. Plus we were having a terrible winter and I was stuck home all day with a mess-of-a-baby and a three-year-old with his own issues. I actually didn't take very many pictures of this time period. It wasn't intentional. I regret it now. But I was so busy caring for him, and I didn't want to remember this miserable time. I didn't want to remember him as just a complete mess who only cried and was never happy. I didn't want HIM to see it later in life because it made me feel like a bad mom.  What kind of mother can't comfort her baby?

And just when it seemed that things couldn't get worse, Eli got RSV and had to be hospitalized. I did a post about that, here it is.  So I'll end this first post here. My next post will pick up after the RSV.