If it’s not one thing going wrong right now, it’s another!

In my last post, I mentioned that we discovered that Evie has GERD/acid reflux. Before you think I hastily rushed to this conclusion to medicate her, let me show you some of the symptoms she was exhibiting:

• Spitting up (increasingly more in the past 2-3 weeks)
• Irritability during or after feedings (particularly in the evenings and night!)
• Coughing/ sputtering during eating
• Refusing to eat
• Crying when placed on her back, especially after a feeding
• Arched her back while crying/feeding
• Choking after some feedings- particularly bad Thursday

• Spits up forcefully, causing stomach contents to shoot out of her mouth

After last week, this was just getting worse and worse.  She had a nasty choking episode at 2:00AM friday morning, then a forceful vomit later on in the day. She she then had a bad night Saturday, slept very fitfully.. and Sunday was just a mess. She forcefully threw up around 5:00-6:00 pm, and then 1:30 am (1:30 one was particulary bad, but both had vomit coming out of her nose and mouth and was most of her feeding).

There’s a lot they recommend you do, like keeping the baby elevated after feedings for 15-30 minutes, smaller feedings, sleeping in a car seat or adjusting the baby’s crib to a 30 degree angle, but it wasn’t working.

And let’s face it. Getting between 1-3 hours of sleep a night and getting covered in curdled baby vomit multiple times wasn’t working for me, either.

Monday we were able to meet with a pediatrician, who agreed with our assessment that the fussiness was mainly in part to what appeared to be acid reflux. She wasn’t too concerned, since Evelyn’s been gaining weight rapidly, but she could tell, even in the appointment, that Evie was a little fussy and in discomfort from the issue. So she prescribed us some medicated drops for the reflux and told us to call in if we didn’t notice a difference within a week.

Within 24 hours, we had ourselves a new baby. If I hadn’t been so sick with a cold, I would have slept marvelously in 1-2 hour stints throughout the night because this little girl was not nearly as fussy as she had been in the past.

Y’all, when I see that doctor again, I might just hug her.

Unfortunately, remember that cold I mentioned? Well, Wednesday night, Evie started showing signs of being congested. I’ll have to put that down in her baby book. You know, where you put things like “Baby’s first words” or “Baby’s first time to crawl”? I’ll put down “Baby’s first cold: Wednesday, August 15, 2012.”

Just kidding. Sort of.

Anyways, like probably most first time parents, I was extremely anxious. There’s not much anyone can do for a cold, but should I take her to the doctor anyways? Blah blah blah. We called the office in the morning, and the nurse told us that if she didn’t have a fever (she didn’t) and if she wasn’t extremely fussy, then go with a humidifier and saline drops and bring her in if she got worse, a fever, or really fussy (though, before the acid reflux medicine, how would we have known differently?).

Well, we didn’t have saline drops OR a humidifier, so that meant going on a field trip to Target with a sick baby. Yay! (Remember, this blog is a no-sarcasm zone…)

Anyways, meet Horton. He’s our new humidifier.

He beat out a frog and a penguin during the in-store audition for the job, and has a special place next to the bed where I have Evie sleeping in her car seat. (He made a convincing argument that he’d go better with the jungle theme in Evelyn’s room, and that his nondescript gray was being true to type, not boring.)

Don’t judge me for having conversations with animal-shaped humidifiers in a Target store until you’ve been sick for a week with a nasty cold and running on 1-3 hours of sleep a night. If you’ve been there, and you still want to judge me, then go ahead.

Plus, if you’re going to be sick, might as well be sick with a bit of whimsy thrown in, yes?

Anyways, please send Evelyn good thoughts so she can get better soon and enjoy being a healthy baby for a while, before the next calamity, like teething, sets in. 🙂