BeBa

We are all much recovered this morning. Jake seems to be pretty much 100%. He was eating well last night and all go go go energy. This morning he had a huge boob of breastmilk when he woke up, followed by 1/2 an avocado and yogurt, then cheerios, then later a bunch of daddy’s scrambled eggs. I think he’s back to normal eating. PHEW.

I’m keeping a food diary and being more conscious about giving him calorie-dense foods. We’re also buying a baby scale so I can log his weight. In hindsight, I should have been doing these things all along. But really, I’m only doing it for CYA, which is annoying. But the fact that I didn’t do it before (and wasn’t doing WBV) is part of what got us into this pickle. We were in no way prepared for the system when we were suddenly forced to participate in it.

He won’t have anything to do with pediasure in a sippy cup. I will try it as a frozen concoction later and see if he likes it better that way. He is a boobie baby though and when he wants to nurse, he wants to nurse. Does it really have more calories than breastmilk? The nutrition people were very forceful that we should give him lots of pediasure to get his weight up. (Of course, they are all adamant that he is failure to thrive.) I need to investigate this.

Scott and I are recovering. Wow, what a hard, traumatic week this has been. We’re still processing the whole thing. I can’t wait to see my girls again later today. Bailey’s been keeping up her blog during this whole affair – it’s awesome. She always claims she hates writing, but set the assignment up as a blog and she’s looking for things to write about. I think what she REALLY hates is longhand. Funny, huh?

It felt so good to sleep at home as a family again last night.

Also, if I ever have a puking baby again, I would manage it very differently from the beginning. Again, in hindsight, I completely mismanaged it by just letting him nurse and nurse. I hope there is never a next time, but if there is, I would give him tiny portions of fluids frequently via syringe until he could keep that down and then gradually increase the fluids. What finally got him keeping breastmilk down in the hospital (once he was hydrated via IV) was letting him nurse no longer than 5 minutes every 10-15 minutes. Once he was keeping that down, then we added BRAT diet foods, again in very tiny, frequent portions every 15 minutes. It’s basic nursing 101 really, but we had 4 nurses before we finally got one who gave us awesome advice and guidance (the same one who suggested the pediasure) in getting Jake on the road to true recovery.

They never did identify the illness. It was not rotavirus per stool sample testing. The ped thinks could be viral, or could be a clue of something ongoing and chronic.

The GI doctor thinks 100% NOT viral and that something is wrong with Jake. He thinks FTT is first red flag and this vomit episode is the second. The end. He was all but rolling his eyes at us for thinking it could be anything else.

Scott thinks 100% viral and is very skeptical that anything is wrong with Jake (both Scott and his father were skinny babies who freaked out the doctors and their mothers, but nothing was ever identified wrong with them). This is a very emotional issue for Scott and his mom especially – they are very frustrated to see history repeating here.

You can imagine how he butted heads with the GI doc. Oy.

I think that Jake’s weight is a red flag meriting investigation. I think it’s more likely that it’s just the way he is, but I can’t help but be concerned that something else is going on and if there is I want to know about it. If there isn’t, I would be thrilled to have stuff ruled out so I don’t have to wonder anymore.

I was so glad Scott wasn’t with me during that conversation with the pediatrician yesterday. He ended up with a migraine all day Thursday and didn’t sleep much Thursday night. He went home to get some sleep when I arrived at 7 am on Friday morning. The way that conversation went, I’m glad he wasn’t even around! He is actually very unhelpful to me in those situations, because he can’t contain his frustration AND be articulate at the same time. He agrees that I should be in charge of interfacing with the medical community LOL. Once we worked out the tag team strategy, we had some good teamwork in force. Scott would take the night shift and I’d go home to sleep. Thank goodness Jake sleeps through the night without nursing most of the time! Even when he woke up, Scott had no problem soothing him back to sleep.

Then I’d arrive in the morning fresh and armed with research I was able to do while home with the computer. It was far better for us if I was the one who had her wits about her when the doctors did their rounds.