Sep 01 2007
Feeling lousy
Zoe has had a little bit of reflux for quite some time now. This week, all of a sudden, she was vomitting up most of her bottle after every feeding. I started by slowly reintroducing water then pedia*lyte then smaller than usual portions of formula. She did well on Thursday night but was bad at daycare on Friday, giving back everything and then crying and stressing out the babysitter who called Momma to see what I wanted her to do—I could hear Zoe crying in the background and ended up crying along with her.
I took her to the doctor on Thursday. He did a chest xray to see if her cough was something serious. It was inconclusive—not perfectly clear and not so full of fluid to determine that was the problem. He decided we should treat it as reflux and wanted me to add rice cereal by spoon into her diet to help hold the formula down in her belly. I held off until today thinking it was a virus because she’s got intestinal issues too. This morning she didn’t hold down all of her pedia*lyte but did keep most of it down. At 1pm, I tried giving her some rice cereal by spoon, but she didn’t know how to deal with it, cried, and ended up pulling it out with her fingers. I ended up taking a knife and enlarging the hole on one of her bottle nipples to make it so the rice cereal would come through. That worked with one ounce and one teaspoon of rice cereal. She kept it down. I gave her another three ounces/three teaspoons at 2:30 and it stayed down. At dinner, I tried her with four ounces/four teaspoons and she gave it all back. I’m frustrated and exhausted and worried sick. I talked with another friend whose son has reflux and she said the prev@cid has made all the difference for him—he still gets sick but he doesn’t cry. She really hasn’t been fussy with her spitting so I don’t know what to do—medicate or not?
I think at this point, I’m going to go talk to the pharmacist tomorrow since I trust both of the men that work at our pharmacy. Hopefully they can tell me whether they think it’s worth medicating or not. I hate thinking that Z is suffering if I can prevent it, but I don’t want to medicate her if it’s unnecessary. Anyone with experience or advice feel free to chime in!
