progress report: spit-up and solids

A friend recently asked me how Elias's reflux has been. She added that she hoped that my not mentioning it much lately was a result of it getting better, not because the topic of sleep has taken precedence. The answer is a little bit of both, actually, and I figured we were due for an update from the spit-up factory. In short, Elias is still spitting up a fair amount throughout the day, but it has gotten better over the past month. I remember Thanksgiving weekend being a particularly spitty one and planning on seriously venting at our GI follow-up appointment the week after. At that appointment we decided to switch his meds yet again. I'm not even sure I ever blogged about our switch from Zantac to Prilosec, after the Zantac seemed to suddenly stop working. After four or five weeks on Prilosec without seeing significant improvement we decided to give Prevacid (same type of drug as Prilosec - another PPI - different brand) a try and it seems to be dong the trick as far as the irritability part of reflux goes. Reflux meds only deal with the irritation from the acid traveling up - and sometimes back down - the esophagus. They don't directly reduce the amount of spit-up, although they have been known to indirectly help out in that department. Something about babies regurgitating less as the esophagus begins to heal. And it does seem like that may be what's happening and/or Elias is finally beginning to outgrow all this. He seems to be most spitty later in the day (fatigue seems to be a factor, making sleep that much more important) and when we visit my brother and his family, really the only traveling we do on a regular basis (and I thought dealing with a spitty baby was annoying in the comfort of my own home!).

But what about introducing solids, you ask? Surely, babies don't spit up once they're no longer on a liquid only diet, right? Wrong! For starters, the consistency of the pureed baby food we're starting Elias on isn't that much thicker than the formula he drinks. And secondly, he's still getting most of his sustenance from the bottle, so he may not spit up after a meal of cereal, fruits, and veggies, but his spit-up after a bottle that follows a bit of pureed sweet potatoes, for example, will be orange in color. Orange spit-up! Fun!

To be honest, though, while I still have moments when I feel like I can't wipe up one more spit-up puddle, I'm a lot more relaxed about the whole thing now than I was a few months ago, when I was sure we'd be over this by month four. In fact, I took him to Trader Joe's the other day, one of his first adventures sitting in the front of the shopping cart, and just as a couple of women in line were commenting on what a cute baby he was, a decent amount of spit-up spilled out onto his hoodie. He was completely unaffected by it. I looked at the ladies and smiled, acknowledging their compliment, as I reached for the burp cloth. This sort of thing happens all the time. It kind of reminds me of that scene in the movie Four Christmases when the baby throws up on Reese Witherspoon's character (watch for it toward the end of the trailer).

So that's where we are as far as the spit-up factory is concerned. I assume he'll stop spitting up eventually. He has to, right? Right?! Oh, and if you suspect that your little one might have reflux, I highly recommend taking a look at this book.

While we're on the topic of digestion and starting solids, I'll just add that I recently explored the world of homemade baby food. We've been using Earth's Best cereal and a few jars of food so far, even though I had this romantic fantasy of myself pureeing fresh, organic fruits and vegetables, free range meats, etc. Not only do I pretty much hate to cook, but how am I going to squeeze this into an already busy day? I barely have time to feed myself some days! But then the KidCo food mill was demonstrated for me and I thought, how hard can it be?


I've only pureed one sweet potato so far, but I have to say, it was pretty easy. And economical. I pureed 8 two ounce servings from just one sweet potato. Even at organic produce prices, that's a lot cheaper than 75 cents or so per two ounce jar.


Initially, even though Elias seemed to enjoy the store-bought version of pureed sweet potatoes he's sampled previously, he didn't seem too impressed with Mom's cooking, more interested in playing with it instead.


But I've since experimented with watering it down a bit (thinning it with formula seems to create an inedible mush) and, even though he continues to make funny faces for awhile at the beginning of a feeding, seems to like it well enough.



So far Elias has sampled both rice and oatmeal cereals, sweet potatoes, carrots, bananas, apples, and pears. We have a little oatmeal cereal and fruit in the morning and some rice cereal with a vegetable (so far just sweet potatoes) in the afternoon. He seems to prefer the oatmeal over the rice cereal and fruits, not surprisingly, over even the sweetest of vegetables. We're going to try something green this week. In addition, occasionally I'll put a piece of fruit in one of those mesh feeding bag teether things for him to gnaw on between feedings.



I thought these things were pretty pointless when I got them, but they seem to satisfy his need to do nothing but "chomp" on something for at least 15 minutes each day. Whatever works, right?