Milk Allergy

Oy. I am such a bad blogger. I never have time to do anything that takes more than 5 minutes at a time! Sigh.

I took Harlee to the pediatrician's last week for an ear infection. The whole time we were there, she screamed non stop bloody murder. The doctor asked if she was still like that all the time. "Uh-yeah. Three months has come and gone and she's still screaming. Not crying, screaming." Then I, yes I, asked if there was a test they could do to see if she had a milk allergy. The pediatrician says "Oh, we didn't do that already?" NO! So she tests her and finds blood in her stool, which is indicative of a milk allergy. Great. Three and a half months we were giving our baby breastmilk and formula that was causing her pain. Poor DH and I felt awful. She was put on Nutramigen right away and we saw a world of a difference. No gas. Our baby was smiling-all the time. She was happy. Cooing and babbling non-stop. Is this what our baby was supposed to be doing all along? It was very evident to us that she clearly needs to stay on the Nutramigen. I only hope she continues to improve.

Formula

I did it. I gave her the first bottle of formula yesterday. And I feel SO much better. Yesterday I decided to stop pumping and slowly introduce more feedings of formula. She ate a little, then stopped and screamed at me as if to say, "What are you doing? This doesn't taste like breast milk?" But she eventually ate it just fine. It felt good not to stress over "Oh its time to pump, but I can't because she's screaming." I didn't worry about pumping at any particular time yesterday, and the freedom felt good. Now of course, I did pump a few times to relieve the painful engorgement, but just when it got bad.

Today, I changed my mind. I won't stop pumping completely, but will pump when I feel like it. I feel okay giving her formula as much as I need to. I need to remind myself that formula is not the anti-Christ. It was just stressing me out SO much. Pumping takes SO much time, and Harlee is a very needy baby. I get so stressed when I am tied to the pump and can't pick her up and soothe her (which of course, makes her scream louder).

So for now she will continue to get pumped breast milk at daycare and the sitter's. We will give formula when we want to at home when she is with us. I currently have a month's supply of breast milk in the deep freeze, so whenever I decide I am done, we still have that to use up.

Giving formula is not what I had planned, but I realize sometimes that my own mental health is more important. I don't want to beat myself up anymore over making sure every feeding is breast milk. Its okay, as long as she's fed something, she should turn out just fine.

Is the Worst Over?

Now that we are having less stressful days, we are doing more fun things. We decided to try out her doorway jumper. We stuffed about 4 rolled up receiving blankets around her to fill in the gaps, but she loved it. I know she is still pretty young for it, and it may be a while before she gets the hang of it, but she loves movement so much we just had to try it out! And DH was so excited when the other day she rolled from her stomach to her back! He had her on the ottaman and luckily caught her really quickly!

It seems that her colic has peaked around 6-7 weeks and it is finally getting better. I never thought we'd get there. The medications never helped. We are still using the Colic Calm, and I think it has made a huge difference. We give it to her every day about 3 times. The only bad thing is that it turns everything black, so if she spits up or has a leaky diaper, I have to be quick with the stain removal. But it has controlled the screaming, so I'll not be complaining.

I have to say, even though her colic isn't totally gone at 8 weeks, that it has to be the worst thing some parents have to go through. I was in tears most days. Poor DH even cried-and the only other time I have ever seen his eyes mist over was when she was born. Colic kills your nerves, your sanity, and tests you to the max. I am fortunate we have great parents who rescued us many times, but I realize I should have called them more. When you wish to become parents, no one ever warns you that your child might scream non-stop, and sometimes you'd wonder why you ever wanted kids. You'd wish for the stork to come back and claim the child that clearly couldn't be yours. What did we do to deserve this? Nothing, it just happens, and for the most part there is nothing to make it better. You just trudge through and hope it doesn't scar any of you for life.

Back to Work

Here are Harlee's first "nice" pictures. We had some friends of ours who are starting a photography business come to our house...three times. Ear piercing screaming Harlee just didn't want anything to do with capturing memories! We finally got one hour of quietness. Hopefully we can get more as the months go on. These were taken at five weeks.

Well here I am going on my second week back to work. (Working full time and being a new mom leaves little blogging time!) The second week is much easier than the first. The first day back I cried in the car the whole way to work. It was very hard. Once I got there, I had so much to do the day flew by. Between pumping four times at work, and remembering to eat and drink lots of water, the day was over before I knew it. I am very fortunate that I have my own office with a locking door and blinds, so no one really bothers me. Day two I cried when I had to leave her at daycare for the first time. But after that I was okay. I still hate to leave her. Its been hard for me leaving her with well meaning relatives, they just don't follow instructions very well. I feel more comfortable leaving her at daycare for the two days we have to since I know they feed her right and know what they are doing. DH feels just the opposite-he'd rather she is with relatives. The good news about going back to work is that I am 99.99% sure I will be laid off again in October for about a year. That makes me VERY happy that I get to stay home with Harlee and draw unemployment.

Harlee is on yet another medication we are trying, this time Prevacid. So far I am not impressed. She still spits up an awful lot and the screaming has yet to let up. I will call tomorrow to let them know, I think the next thing is Axid. I need to ask about trying to add a tad of cereal, I'll try anything. We also ordered Colic Calm (a specialty gripe water) and hopefully that will be here by the end of the week. My dad and stepmom have been SO wonderful coming over many times when we are both in tears and at our wits end from her screaming. I never imagined it would be this bad. Or that it even could be this bad.

Oh-and last Friday I got my stupid AF back-ugh. So much for breastfeeding keeping it away. I should have known. Yep, body still doesn't work right!

No More Time Off

So we did manage to capture a few smiles on camera the other day. The other day she woke up and found her voice! Now she makes little coos, oohs, and ahhs. So she can actually do something other than scream, that is nice to know!

This is her wrapped in her Miracle Blanket. Now all we have to do is just start to wrap her up and she quiets down right away. Sometime between 6 and 8 pm she starts to get fussy, so we feed and change her and wrap her up, give her the pacifier and place in her crib. Usually she will fall asleep within a half an hour. Daytime is another story though. This kid never naps! She is anything but normal.

I go back to work Monday. Some days I can't wait, since she screams almost all the time. Even when she is in the rare moment of silence, I close my eyes and I hear her screaming. I cry a lot. Other times, I get upset at the thought that I have to go back, I know I will miss her, even though she screams. I wish I could stay home.

The meds are definitely not working. We don't go back until July 28th, so I will ask what else they can give her. How can one kid possibly scream that much? And hardly sleep?

I wish I could just give her formula. But its too expensive, and I'd just feel guilty about yet another thing. I hate pumping. I will never get more than four hours of sleep at a time. For a whole year. Ugh. I can't go longer, because I start to hurt. I swear I smell like sour milk all the time. I hate it.

Yeh-I'm having a horrible day today. She wouldn't sleep for more than 2 hours at a time last night. Woke up screaming to eat. I tried to get a shower, couldn't even stay in long enough to shave my legs. I am wearing sweat pants and a t-shirt. In July. Oh well at least its overcast and I won't sweat to death. I don't know if I'll ever have another kid.

One Month

This was at one week. She's so skinny!

This is two weeks.

Three weeks.


Four weeks.

My baby is one month old! Ahh! She is already growing out of newborn sized clothes and is moving into the 0-3 month sizes. She was up to 8lbs 9oz and was 21 inches long at our one month appointment. Growing like crazy! She is holding her head up for even longer periods of time now and is beginning to track objects with her eyes. She has quite a little belly on her and eats great. She pretty much gets all pumped breast milk in bottles now, as the breast feeding just wasn't going so well. But, as long as she gets it, it doesn't really matter how.

We finally broke down and took Harlee to the pediatrician to see if they could help with her constant screaming. The whole office felt so bad for us, she screamed the whole time we were there. There must have been five other infants in the waiting room, all were quiet except our screaming one. The pediatrician said she definitely has colic, bad. She said her stomach may be spasming too much and gave us a medicine called hyoscyamine to calm the spasms. It also has a mild sedative effect, so maybe she would sleep a bit more too. (Who said babies were supposed to sleep like 12 hrs a day? Not ours. We're lucky if its a total of 7.) She even had another pediatrician come talk to us too, I pretty much was in tears because I was so upset from her constant screaming. They reassured me that we are doing everything we can, and yes, she really is a difficult baby and I'm not just a wimpy first time mom. If the medicine doesn't work, we are supposed to call back. The pediatrician was so nice, she even said if the screaming is too much to handle, to drop her off at the office for a few hours and they would watch her! Wow! So far we have used the meds for two days and it has made a world of a difference. She actually sleeps! And the crying is down to a minimum. And its not the shrieking screams, it is just fussy normal decibel level tolerable crying. Hope it keeps working. I am sending the pediatrician a thank you note!

Time is Flying By

We have been a family of three for almost one month now. The time has flown by. I was reviewing pictures on the camera today and realized we need to take far more of the everyday moments with our beautiful baby. She is growing so fast. I was in tears just looking back at the pictures from her first few days to how big she is now.

This pink outfit was actually a preemie size. Those first 2 weeks or so, she couldn't fit into any of her newborn stuff. My mom and DH's mom went out and got a few things for her to wear, although many things were too short. I just had a long skinny baby!

This is her first little newborn sized dress she got to wear! She fell asleep like that on DH's lap.

Harlee and I at a relative's. This was our first road trip, unfortunately Daddy had to work. But Harlee got tons of attention from all her relatives.

This was Fourth of July. I was going to get a picture without the tacky pacifier clip, but when we got home she had a major diaper blowout, so I'll have to do some laundry and get some more pics later on.

So how is life now? Crazy fast. I swear all I do is feed the kiddo! For now I am pumping 95% of the time and just breast feeding when we feel like it. She is happy, and gaining weight, so I feel ok with that. We have had a few nights where she has slept for 3 1/2 hrs, which is better than her 2hrs in the beginning. I am learning to let her sleep as long as she wants and be ready to feed her as soon as she wakes up. We have well meaning parents wanting to come over pretty much every day, and I treasure the days we have no visitors. I want to cherish these new moments with just us. I only have 2 and a half weeks left until I have to return to work, and I am dreading it. I wish I could just be a stay at home mom, but not in this day and age.

Oh-we got the DVD "The Happiest Baby on the Block." What a difference it has made! Her crying can actually be stopped! Those total meltdowns that consisted of hours of inconsolable crying are pretty much gone. I only wish we had it for the first 3 weeks! She still doesn't sleep much and is still fussy in general, but as long as the hours of screaming are gone, I can handle it. This is definitely something I will give as a gift to all new mothers I know.