It's been a stressful few days, and I finally broke down and made an appointment with a pediatric gastroenterologist. I'm so worn down, exhausted... emotionally drained over the problems E has. I hate looking into her sweet face with her "I love you" smile knowing that she's going to be in pain again at some point. I completely broke down yesterday. A was having a terrible day with her, and I'd had a terrible day the day before. We both got so frustrated we had to leave the room for a minute and it made me feel like I let her down. There's nothing like being unable to stop your baby from crying (and getting frustrated about it) to make you feel helpless, like a failure, like the worst mother in the world. I just kept saying I didn't deserve her. A doesn't feel this way. He knows that a constantly screaming baby is something anyone would have trouble with. But I feel like I should have more patience. I don't know how I could, but I want it. And I'm going to pray for relief for my sweet girl, and extra patience until she's all fixed up. A called me after I texted him about how awful I was and said "are you done?". In this "You're being ridiculous. You're a great mom!" voice. And my parents keep saying that, too. But I just wish I could be even better. And I wish E didn't have to feel pain. So I made the appointment. She doesn't always do it, but basically the problem is that she screams, cries, thrashes, arches, throws her body around, etc. when eating. She looks so happy to see the bottle, then you put it in her mouth and she screams.Sometimes after sucking for a second, sometimes the second it enters her mouth. It's hell to get her to finish, because you know she needs to eat, and she wants to eat, but it seems to be hurting her. Once she's done, she spits up copious amounts of her meal, up to 3+ hours afterwards. It makes her cough, her eyes get all read and watery, and sometimes it makes her cry. It's just not fair to her to feel that way, so although we don't want to put her through tests, she needs to get better, and we'll hopefully solve this problem for good on 6/19 when we see the doctor. I expect they'll do a barium swallow, which I'm not excited about, but if it clues us in to what's going on with my baby, I'm OK with it.
The thing that's so strange about it all is that she has plenty of days where she's perfect. Where she doesnt thrash around and scream. And I don't know what the difference is. And whenever she's not thrashing or spitting up, even on the "bad" days, she has this huge, gorgeous, heart-melting smile on her sweet face. I wish we could move the appointment up, but apparently pediatric GIs aren't easy to come by, and the only other place we would be able to go is at Hopkins, which, while I love, is even worse with appointments (at my August 8th appointment for my kidneys, the next available was March. Yes. March).
I keep saying that if I knew she was crying just to be a jerk (which she is WAY too young for) I could deal with it. What I can't deal with is not being able to fix a problem. My mom keeps saying "I've never seen a baby do this! Something is wrong!" and I keep saying "Well no shit. I've been saying that for months!". The time has come to nip this thing in the bud. If I had to guess, I'd say severe reflux and slow gastric emptying. Only the tests will tell. I don't think Zantac is doing it for her, but she doesn't tolerate the Prevacid solutabs, so we'll see. I don't care what I have to do. I'm going to fix my child.
Like I said, she has great days, too. It's like the problem comes in spells for 2-3 days at a time. I was actually starting to think she'd outgrown it until last Friday. Anyway, here is my angel playing with her birdy yesterday right before bed time. She was happy as a little clam.
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