Sensitive Tummies

The weekend before Thanksgiving Emily got sick. It was easy to tell she was in pain and she was having 15-20 poopy diapers a day. Life was horrible. I tried tons of things but could not figure out what was wrong, so off to the pediatrician we went.

They fit us in immediately. They are always really good about fitting kids in but they were really worried about Emily because she was low on weight to begin with and did not want her dropping. Once there they checked a bunch of things and determined she has a milk protein allergy.

There are two ways to treat this:
- If breastfeeding the mom goes on an elimination diet. You cut out all dairy and gluten. It takes 3 weeks to start working on fixing the baby's problem. If it does not work then you need to remove more items from your diet and wait another 3 weeks and if it still does not work then you need to switch to hypoallergenic formula.
- Use hypoallergenic formula. This takes a max of 72 hours to start working.

The week before Emily got sick she went on a nursing strike. I was still pumping (I even was getting up in the middle of the night when she was sleeping to pump) but for some reason my supply dropped dramatically a few days after her strike started. Due to this she was only getting about a quarter breastmilk and I was driving myself crazy trying to pump as much as possible and run on absolutely no more sleep than an hour and a half at a time, sometimes less (due to her being awake and when I needed to pump).

This made the decision easy (well at least I thought it did). We switched to complete formula. Within hours I saw an improvement. That did not make the idea of losing my breastfeeding experience or the knowledge that breastmilk is best any easier. It took me a while but I now know that I am doing what is best for Emily. That does not stop people from making comments. Most of them are harmless but about 3 weeks ago I had a women stop me at the store when I was looking at the formula. She then informed me that breastfeeding was best. First I was stunned. I could not believe she was saying this to me. But I whipped out my best southern lady bitchy voice (that is right I was raised in the south and I know how to bitch you out like a lady). My response: "Why bless your heart. Thank you so much". She was slightly confused but wondered off and left me alone. I have no idea why people and society think they have the right to tell me how to feed my baby or what I should be doing with my ta-tas. Last time I checked they belong to me.

A few weeks into the new formula we noticed Emily was developing re-flux  She never had re-flux before and it was progressively getting worse. She normally changes her outfit 4-7 times a day and I have to change mine at least 2 times. She was also showing signs of pain. So back to the doctor we went. She got a prescription and the pain is now gone but the spit up is just as bad. Oh well as long as she is not in pain then we can deal with the rest.

The best part about switching to this formula is that she is now growing like crazy. In the first two weeks on it she gained 2.5 lbs and went from just out of newborn clothes to 3-6mo. She was always small in the 30th percentile and now is normal at 50th. Yay!