Today my 5 month baby Gretchen went back to the pedestrian. Honestly, I do not like the practice that I ended up going with last minute. I failed to contact the pedestrian I really wanted for my daughter earlier in my pregnancy. Honestly, I did not expect to be told that she or anyone else in their practice would NOT BE ACCEPTING NEW PATIENTS. Lets be real, I’m going to keep calling the office and asking if they can take my child, a new patient, anytime soon. That way I can contact the health insurance and request a new doctor to be listed on her card. But until than, or if ever, I have decided to accept that I have made up my mind. It is time to find a new practice that my health insurance is willing to let Gretchen be seen and insurance covered. I had no idea that in my county the health department refuses to see premmies. I doubt I would of been happy with that route but I’m not happy with doctor I have received.
This morning me and my SO took Gretchen to the clinic. I called yesterday to set it up and got told that her actual doctor is not taking indirect appointments…what does that even mean? I knew her doctor was pregnant (that part doesn’t upset me) but I cannot understand why I can’t just be told she is taking her maternity leave and only taking the top most important appointments….okay, so is my daughter not important? Why even take any appointments? I sure hope the ones she’s taking have some big huge reason for and not only seeing certain kids out of favoritism… I admit I got paranoid when I was told that. How hard is it to say “She is currently on maternity leave, would you mind seeing someone else” and just leave it at that. But I got over it.
We arrived early to the appointment, and did not even wait long. I was prepared for first time because last night I made a list of all the things that I should absolutely tell the doctor, especially since this is the first time he has seen Gretchen. The list was as follows (you see why as a first time mom with a 5 month old was desperate for the doctors help):
1. Gretchen spits up ALL DAY-ALL NIGHT. More so after her bottle but I do not keep count like I should but it has to be 35-40 times (each spit up is a lot of spit up) in a 24 hour period.
2. She does not always cry when she spits up BUT she cries A LOT. She does not sleep good (tossing and turning sounds through monitor) 4-5 nights a week. Naps, no matter where it’s taken last no more than 30 minutes if even that. She usually falls asleep for 5-10 minutes. I have noticed her sleeping with her back tilted up and her head all the way back, if I move her to be comfortable (in my mind I see it as uncomfortable) that within a few minutes she returns to that same position.
3. (THIS ONE IS FRUSTRATING AND I AM GLAD I ACTUALLY GOT A WORD IN TO TELL HIM) When bottle feeding, I do try to stop her to burp. I also let her suck until I count to 30 and pull the bottle out for a count of 5 because she slurps it down so fast, no matter which bottle I use and/or nipple. When I feed her formula majority of the time I make a 4 ounce bottle. I make sure for her size that I follow the calculations for how much she should drink. Yes, 3 months ago I did not follow this and she was drinking 5-6 ounces at a time every 3-4 hours and she was ranging in weight of 6 pounds to 10 pounds. It took some work to get her down to 4 ounce bottles. I’ll explain how that happened further down. But I would try burping her at 1 ounce, 2 ounce, and 3 ounce. 1 and 2 always ends up with her screaming and trying to throw herself out of my grip. 3 ounces I sometimes got that reaction. At 4 ounces she will let me burp her and I usually got extra burps if at 1,2, and 3 ended in a fail where she was not going to burp after 10-15 minutes of trying. After she was done burping, spit up would happen(and spit up would occur at 1 ounce burps when I could actually get a burp, plus knowing it had been 3-4 hours since last feeding I knew 1 ounce had not filled her up, and double plus she showed all the signs of hunger including a loud vocaled hungie cry). She usually would get mad if I did not feed her more. I stopped myself though because over the next 3-4 hours I would usually have a full set of screaming, crying, refusing to play, she would not cuddle me, and if I succeed in her falling asleep than 85% of the time she was awake within 15 minutes. 10% of the time she would sleep between 30 to (and the almost lucky days) 60 minutes. The other 5% was a true blessing to me. The doctor did tell me the reaction to burping–and over the next few hours of an awake baby but super sleepy baby–was most likely due to her throat and her esophagus was burning and letting that air up would hurt her. I kind of had a feeling that was happening. (because sometimes it was not her usual hungry cry, but it sounded like she was just uncomfortable and almost in to much pain but not burping leads to problems so it was a lose-lose scenario)
4. Okay, so at least once a day sometimes more but not always she would be in a let’s play mood. The problem. It was always short lived. Sometimes she would return to the crying spells in not even 5 minutes and absolutely nothing would cheer her up. Honestly, she averaged playing a straight 20-25 minute play time like 3-4 times a week. I read that crying with reflux was bad it hurt them more, well like 2 weeks ago (before I tried this method) I was like, its time to practice cry it out sleep training. As soon as I read about that I just felt terrible. Yes she would fall asleep after the 2nd or 3rd trip in there, but on those nights I let her cry and hurt more for 9-15 minutes longer than I should of. I won’t even admit to nights that I took more trips in there. So yes, before even speaking to this pediatrician (I’m getting to where he grinds my nerves but its still gonna be a really long blog, honestly if your still reading at this point, THANK YOU for supporting my blog.) –Back to before I met the doc–I felt really terrible that all the things I tried to do here with out medical advantages and resulted in to many fails. I am gonna say it, I wish I could be the unrealistic “PERFECT MOM” but even after I finally get on a decent schedule, I know I will mess up. And you know, since I am okay with these terms, I ask to not be belittled about messing up. And that is why I’m so annoyed at this guy.
5. I’ll finally tell you things I tried, techniques I looked up or a friend or family member suggested trying. This was not my first technique I tried to see if it would make a difference, but it is one I have done 95% of feedings since discovering it. She would sit up drinking her bottle, and she tries so hard to push herself to laying back on me as much as she can that a few times I was just in the mind frame of “she will spit up regardless” but I was usually exhausted and at my ends wit and just took one time here and there (average of maybe 1 in 35-40 feedings give or take). The harder part was her most cheerful moments was when she was done eating and enjoyed being on mommy’s lap and did not want to wait for out silly time. She would do everything in her power to treat me as a trampoline. Standing and walking never helped she would bounce around constantly. The crazy part is we have a lot of moments where the first 5 minutes out of 25-30 minutes she would be chill, but still spit up several times in a row. So I’m still working on this one, I will not give up until she realizes that me keeping her still is mommie trying to keep her from hurting as much as I can stop it, which is not all the way–sadly.
6. When she was four months old I did the trick of 1 tablespoon cereal to 4 ounces of formula–swapping back and forth with the oatmeal and the rice–and only doing half the bottles to 3/4 bottles in 24 hour period (OFF TOPIC BUT IF I FINISH THIS WHOLE STORY IN PART 1 YOU’LL SEE WHY I JUST HAD A MOMENT ON MY BLOG-So 4 ounces every 3-4 hours thats what– “4×8=32–4×6=24” which means it wasn’t every day where she got 32 ounces and it’s not exceeding her limit for being weighed in this morning at 15 pounds, Google the formula amount to babys weight equation…you’ll see why it frustrates me that I keep getting told my baby eats to much and medical field employees have used the word ‘FAT’ on my baby girl…cuz surely she’s fat that is what causes the spit up!). NOW I WILL BREATHE AND GO BACK TO SAYING that cereal in her formula was working. For like 3 weeks she was only spitting up 4 times a day at most. I do not know what happened. At week 3 her spit up increased to 20 times in 24 hours over a period of 2-3 days. I was adding just a little more cereal each time and eventually decided I wasn’t going to do it on a regular basis. I would try to get her to eat just the cereal, she still won’t do it and I only try once or twice a week because she just will not eat it at all still. Neither rice or cereal.
7. Her 4 month WCC, her doctor gave us some Enfamil for fussiness gas and something else. I gave 4 ounces all heated on stove (it was the ready made) 24 hours later she wasn’t just spitting up still; she was having a reaction and we spent 4-5 days with 10-15 diaherra diapers. So I stopped that immediately. NOW before I left that day I was told by her pediatrician, not this doctor or any other doctor in the practice that has the say so on what my daughter and I should be doing (and if he had come in there asking “NOW miss little Gretchen what seems to be the problem” –that was not asked–and actually let me explain everything I’ve done to try to maintain the reflux, to at least keep it in a moderation level, than he wouldn’t of had to see me start to get annoyed with him…. (and this I’m not overreacting about)) Before I left that day her doctor (that I don’t like but definitely prefer to this grumpy rich old fellpw) had told me to try the formula she have me and if I did not want to retry all the techniques, to make an appointment and we will try to determine first how much medicine she needs, if she needs to change kinds, that I’ll probably be back there 2 more times before shot day in a month. She did not seem to care as much as I would of wanted, but she had told me, the next step would be trying medicine. That’s what she told me, I told that old fart that her doctor knows exactly everything I’ve tried, and in fact I wrote down all symptoms and things I have tried to decrease her spit up. Lets just say that I got medicine for my daughter. I have given her the first dose 3 hours ago in a 2oz bottle. She burped 3 times (not on the 1 oz of 2 of course) but she got her burps out. And now pretty much been sleeping this whole time! Hence the really long blog. There’s a few other things on my list like…
8. I told you that I was gonna explain how I succeeded to go from 5-6 oz down to a constant 4 oz. With a 2 oz. Thrown randomly in the day for them moments where she won’t wait til dinner or something. Well, another technique that not a lot of us moms enjoy (some do and more power to you!) but feeding smaller bottles closer together. Like she gets a 4 oz bottle to wake, 4 oz in middle of night and 4 oz before bed (this was before our solids start) and than lets say bedtime is 8pm and wake up is 7am, so after that 4oz, I Fed her at round 9 a 2 oz, at about 10:30-11 she got another 2oz, close to 1 she gets a 2oz, at 2:30 to 3 another 2oz, 5 pm another 2oz, at 6:20ish another 2oz to tide over, and than shortly after we work on our bedtime routine so we can be having a 4 oz at 8 or shortly after. That did work with some of the spit up, but usually 7 of the bottles would cause the reflux, and it wasn’t always the 4oz ones and than some of the bottles wasn’t just one spit up But 3 or more.
9. I mean I seriously tried EVERYTHING, another doctor in her practice that Gretchen saw because I was paranoid she was getting strep, we had mentioned she was spitting every bottle several times and that we decreased her amount by 2 oz each bottle. But when the two hour and less of holding her to feed her sometimes not getting burps and when I went 20 minutes trying no burps and than she spit up, we decided to take the time to ask another doctors advice, who practices with Gretchen doctor and this awful dude of a doctor. Her advice was to buy Pedialyte and have Gretchen drink her normal bottle and substitute the Pedialyte for the time and get as close to 8 hours before Gretchen was just hungie for a formula bottle. She said 6 hours would do but if she was hungie by 5 to 6 hours to go ahead and give the 4 oz of formula. This method worked all of 3 days and than she started spitting up the Pedialyte. Honestly we still give the Pedialyte but only because Gretchen fell so in love with the flavors that there are times where we think she wants formula but all she wants is Pedialyte. Of course I told this doctor about the Pedialyte and he basically made it a point to try and say the Pedialyte was the cause of reflux. Well being a new mama bear I just informed that reflux started Well before we introduced Pedialyte, per doctor what’s her name. He was just trying to make it out like I caused Gretchen to have a reflux problem. At this point I reminded him her doctor said to come see her if the reflux didn’t get better. I tried another 3 weeks with techniques that we had tried just to see but finally I said enough. I told him I didn’t realize she was 4 weeks from a maternity leave and if I walked out of there unable to get something to help my baby that I was gonna call when I got home and set up to see a different doctor. Yes, Zantac was given to my daughter. Especially after (9.) I informed him that the spit up was having clumps in them. Also, I pointed out that if he looked at her growth from 1 month old to now he would see that this month, also been the worst month of spit up so far that she went from gaining 2-3 pounds a month to just barely 1 pound. In fact I believe it was 1 pound and 2 ounces that she gained. So that’s a sure tell sign of reflux, a long with other things I been sitting here explaining about.
10. Which left me to the last point on my sheet. In 3 or so months she went from only spitting up maybe 8 times a day not all the same bottles and yes at that time she was getting 5-6 oz. Usually 6 oz but sometimes she just wouldn’t finish a bottle. Now she finishes every single bottle. I know she’s still hungry, even with solids added at dinner and here in a week or two I’m adding a solid to breakfast bottle. I looked up feeding schedules. I noticed a lot of moms example show feeding 8 oz at a time and going longer stretches without bottles. This has to be fixed, if the Zantac does not work they need to dig deeper try something else. They say my baby is fat. They don’t see her 24/7, they don’t understand that because of her reflux, I’m being forced by my pediatricians to halfway starve her. She needs more food but we can’t be spitting everything up. So now we are gonna see how this goes. Part 2 I will be telling all about tonights Randitine and what happens tomorrow. I’m charting everything. Time ate. Amount consumed. How ranitidine was administed to her. And honesty I hope this works. But we will see. Thanks for reading!
First Time & Stay Home Mommy
gretchensmommie 