11 pounds, 10 ounces, 23 inches. I don't recall what his head circumference was but he's measuring fairly solidly in the 50th percentile, all around, up from the 25th percentile for weight and height (his head's always been a little bigger than his body). Yep, totally average.
Those were Elias's stats on Wednesday, when we took him in partly for his two-month appointment, but mainly to re-assess the spit-up situation which, despite all our efforts, continued to get worse over the weekend and throughout the early part of this week. Wednesday was particularly bad; we spent most of the day eating, near projectile vomiting, eating some more, followed by two or three hours of a half dozen or more less projectile spit-up episodes. All day. By 5:30 I wasn't sure I could get through another day of this before our appointment on Friday. So we saw the pedi that night and she recommended we put the boy through an upper GI series to rule out any sort of intestinal obstruction, malrotation, or the like. Fortunately, none of those things is at the root of his problems, which remain a mystery (but I'm glad we ruled all that out!). Either he has really bad reflux or a food allergy, most likely cow's milk protein, with a little soy possibly thrown in the mix.
We'll meet with a GI specialist next week sometime to go back to the drawing board. Our pedi didn't seem to think it was dietary but because of Elias's very particular symptoms, the GI specialist she spoke with recommended I stay on the elimination diet for another week (we're at about a week and a half and counting), and try to avoid soy as well since about a third of babies with the milk allergy are also sensitive to soy. And I thought cutting out dairy was hard!
It's a tricky situation. If it's not a milk allergy then the options are stick with the Zantac and hope that helps a bit more as he outgrows the reflux on his own (which typically peaks in about two more months), or upgrade to the next class of drugs used to treat this kind of thing (more often in adults than infants), something I have more reservations about than putting my kid on Zantac. If it is a milk allergy, our options include continuing to breastfeed but steering clear of dairy and soy (unless reintroducing it causes no problems) for as long as I plan to feed my child this way, or try one of the elemental formulas that contain neither milk nor soy. I don't really want to do any of these things...Is that an option?
Ironically, he had a pretty good day yesterday and has had very little spit-up again today. Is he beginning to outgrow this phase or is it true that you won't see improvement on the elimination diet until a good two to three weeks off of dairy? We'll see, I guess. I'll stick with the dietary changes for another week, at least, and if he continues to improve, the soy and dairy challenges should confirm if what's going on with him is indeed food-related. We'll go from there. A year or so without dairy or soy is a long time, but after all this hard work, I'm not sure I want to give up breastfeeding so easily (this despite secretly hoping for a milk allergy a few weeks ago when nursing was still frustrating and the spitting up was beginning to become another problem to contend with). The silver lining of this diet, of course, is that I'm sure to lose not only the 6-10 pounds or so left of the pregnancy weight but maybe even a few pounds beyond. Dairy products are key ingredients in all the foods I crave: chocolate, ice cream, baked goods. I haven't been in any particular rush to lose the baby weight, it just seems to be coming off rather quickly. I lost 20 pounds in the first week alone, then another ten or so over the next month. My weight had plateaued for awhile until I cut out obvious dairy and in that first week I lost another three pounds. Then I went to Trader Joe's and Whole Foods and bought just about every snack food that didn't contain dairy: plantain chips, corn chips, vegan donut holes and rugelech, hot tamales (the candy). I even managed to find a margarine that didn't actually contain some sort of milk derivative. But most of these things contain soy, so it's back to fruits and grains for awhile. As long as I can have peanut butter and avocados, I think I might just be able to swing it.
2 comments:
I think you're doing really well. Normally I would say spitting up is part of that "baby" thing but reading your blog tells me you're doing the right thing by the doctor. This is your first and I'd think that it's more like your third. You and Neal are smart and going to be great parents. Keep up the good work and I love reading your blog.
That's what everyone says! And I believed it for awhile, but I'm pretty confidant that the amount he's spitting up - sometimes downright vomiting - is not the run of the mill baby thing. I've even had a few mom-witnesses validate that instinct, commenting after just one bout of spit-up (mind you, the worst episodes involve 8 or more spit-up incidents...I usually lose count after that), um, yeah, that's not normal, or something like, yes, I can see why you'd be concerned. He does seem to have finally turned a corner late last week, still spitting up pretty frequently but the quantity is much less and there have actually been a few feeding cycles when he hasn't spit up at all or very, very little. Hopefully we'll have some more answers by the end of the week. Ah, babies...
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