Warning: The following is a full blown MommyBlogger-type post. Proceed at your own risk.
C.C. has been a joy lately.
She's an extremely happy baby. When we take her out in public we can pass her from person to person and barely hear a peep out of her, even if she's missed her nap. Put her on the floor to practice her crawling...
(She's this close to crawling, which means I'll have to kiss the ass groove in my couch goodbye soon but since I've been told that hog-tying a baby is illegal in most states, what can I do?)
(Where was I?)
...and she'll play with her toys for long chunks of time. Sometimes I forget she's there. She's an efficient nurser (which is a good thing since she still refuses to take a damn bottle) and a lusty eater of solids. And her sleep... Well, we don't talk about sleep unless there's bitching involved and I think by my lack of bitching about sleep lately you can deduce how things are going.
Mmm, sleep.
Anyway, like I said - C.C. is a joy.
Except...
You knew there had to be an except.
Except for her crazy projectile vomiting.
The spitting up and the chunks and the smell of baby vomit that clings to the both of us constantly... It's enough to drive me to drink if I wasn't there already.
Her poor tummy is messed up. She wears a bib every single day and I change her into a new one at least three times a day because she's covered the things in nastiness as soon as I put a new one on. It doesn't matter if she ate five minutes before or two hours before, there is no rhyme or reason. Sometimes she gets sick if she gets excited, like Stan on South Park. Sometimes I find her in her crib after her nap happily playing with her spit up on her crib sheet. And the worst one - she pukes up on herself right after her bath. Nothing upsets me more than bathing her and then having her sweet, freshly washed baby smell obliterated by the smell of upchuck.
Except maybe getting covered with sick in the middle of Barnes and Noble. That really sucks. Too bad I couldn't aim her at certain parents and use her as a weapon.
Months ago, her pediatrician had given us a prescription for Prilosec. It helped a little but getting her to take it was a full blown battle of will and strength and that baby of mine? She is as willful as she is strong. I can understand not wanting to have some nasty goo squirted down my throat (Watch yourself, I'm talking about my baby daughter here so keep your nasty thoughts to yourself.) so I tried the medicine myself, just to see how gross it really was.
Sweet baby Jesus. That stuff was like drinking motor oil with a yak spit chaser. But worse.
So I stopped giving the medicine to her. At the time it didn't seem to make that much of a difference anyway.
I had just recently started giving her Mylicon drops (and no, we don't have the Mylicon Drops that were recalled) and that helped for a couple of days. But now? Not so much. Maybe I'm not giving her enough? I don't know. I get a little freaked out when I'm giving my baby medicine for an icky stomach and alternately giving her fairly large doses of teething tablets and liquid pain reliever for her teeth. It seems like a bit much for a child so small.
The sickness doesn't seem to bother her too much. She is a champion back-archer, but I don't think that necessarily happens because she's uncomfortable.
Who am I kidding? I have no idea if it's because of discomfort. I just have no idea.
*sigh*
I'm tired of smelling like vomit. I'm tired of spending a fortune on dry cleaning (she has great aim and an uncanny way of knowing if I'm wearing wool or a regular washable fabric). I'm tired of my delicious baby smelling like a frat house after a weekend kegger. But mostly I'm afraid she's in pain and I'm not seeing the signs.
Okay, and the smell. The smell is pretty bad.
*double sigh*
Sunday, December 07, 2008
On the bright side, my dry cleaner is thinking of making me part of the family
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
34 comments:
Um, non-mommy type stepping in here with some assvice. Well, I am expecting my first in May but we're not quite there yet.
Back about 15 years ago I was teaching swimming and I had one kid who would puke. Every. Single. Class. It got so that I got her out of the pool well before she yakked. Didn't matter if she was happy, sad, swallowed water, didn't swallow water. She was a puker. Her mom wasn't concerned about it - said she had an easy gag reflex and left it at that.
Maybe CC just has an easy gag reflex. Although I can imagine that the smelling like vomit all the time isn't pleasant. My point is, she may not be in pain and she sounds pretty happy.
I'm also an expecting mommy weighing in - have you tried pro-biotics? I have couple of friends who used them on their kids and had great results.
One friend reviewed hers here: http://www.spiltmilkmoms.com/wordpress/?p=58
Good luck!
two words---GRIPE WATER!! Both of mine were exactly like this and gripe water was the only thing that helped. I swear by that stuff. Seriously!!
My first daughter was like that...yes it was absolutely awful...no rhyme or reason...just projectile vomit. She got better as she got older just like the doctor said she would...but even up till around 2 or so she's get sick at family get togethers when she got excited and somehow only when I was holding her...the hubs didn't get why it freaked me out. Now she just gets car sick...I'm hoping she outgrows that one soon. Good luck...wish I had an answer for you..we tried everything to no avail...she just outgrew it for the most part.
And yet another piece of unsolicited advice - my son had reflux and also pyloric stenosis (not that your daughter has pyloric stenosis, just saying that oh lordy, we know from projectile vomiting) and he was on Prevacid dissolving tablets. You put one in a little syringe, pull up some water, shake it around, and voila - little orangey (good orangey) bits that are easy to squirt and digest. It takes about a week for drugs like this to both get in and get out of the system. We really thought it made a huge difference over the liquid goo he was getting before.
She is so adorable!! Both of my kiddos spit up a ton, never found a solution to the problem.
she is a punkin! even if she is a puke machine
My kids were major spitters for ages. Somewhere around 8 months, it started to improve. Now we're down to only occasional puke-age at 16 months, nothing like the days of spit all over the playmat and the crib. My sister-in-law took to coming over to visit her niece and nephew in scrubs...
My first born was a spitter too. I gave her Mylicon all the time. I don't know that it really helped at all, but eventually she grew out of it.
So that wasn't helpful at all was it?
You live near a city with the world's best pediatric gastroenterologists. Why do you think they're here? It's to see babies like CC and help them to not puke all over their mommies all day long. Call the mass gen practice and bring that baby in. They are WONDERFUL doctors (see the Boston Mag best docs issue this month for another recommendation) and they WILL help. I promise.
cutest little puke monster i've seen! (since my own, that is!!)
If you don't mind a little more assvice, I'll give you mine. (But hey, I'm nearly a nurse, so that makes it a little better, right?)
I've had two spitters, and I'll second the recommendations of gripe water (Baby's Bliss was my fav). I didn't discover gripe water until Cordy was 6 months old and fully into her Phantom Spitter phase.
Also, have you tried Prevacid instead of Prilosec? I ask only because the Prevacid solutabs (mix with water to give to babies) are strawberry flavored - not nasty tasting at all. Both of my girls took Prevacid and it helped.
We went through that with my daughter (they gave her antacids thinking it was acid reflux), and it seems to be starting with my son too.
It doesn't seem to bother him, but damn, that smell! I've been close to puking myself after he breathed on me a couple of times.
My youngest, who did not spit up, had reflux terribly, terribly bad. Strangely, my oldest, who, like CC, yakked constantly, did not. The difference is not in the yakking, but in the expulsion of stomach contents into the esophagus.
Some kids are just pukers. My oldest spit up until he was 14 or 15 months old. And believe me, I know how old it gets. I know how it is to smell of vomit ALL THE DANGED TIME.
He still gags very easily. He has a long uvula and before they were removed, unusually large tonsils.
I used to have to take a change of clothes, for both of us, everywhere we went.
I empathize. I really do. But it will pass, I promise.
She is beautiful!
My 3 yo just developed a reflux issue and has been vomiting in the middle of the night, once a week at least for the last month. He never had an issue as a baby.
Last night? It was in his hair and all over me. Chunks on my egyptian cotton sheets and OMG, the smell! I wanted to throw away my mommy card and let someone else come clean up. Amazing the strength we find when we have no other choice. It totally sucks.
Send her to me! She must be the cutest puker ever.
Hi, I'm new to your blog but wanted to share that my niece has had the exact same issues for seven months.. until she went to a pediatric chiropractor... as crazy as it sounds her body was out of line.. which lead to poor sleeping and projectile vomiting has been helped since she started receiving treatment as well, she will now take a bottle and is on a sensitive tummy formula which is helping too... just a thought as it made me wonder how many babies are just out of whack from the birth process and labeled as having colic or poor sleepers etc.
Shaggy has reflux, and he takes the prilosec. He had all the symptoms you describe. We started him on Zantac, but it was too mild for him. It is a syrup, maybe she would take it better??
Another way to combat it is to keep her upright for 30 minutes after as many feedings as possible.
Hang in.
I have no advice except to stop wearing dry-clean-only clothes. My youngest puked constantly. He still does so very, very much. And he's 6. I kind of pine for the breastmilk puke smell.
All 3 of my boyz were pukers. Drove me cuh-razy. Multiple doctors visits with each b/c something HAD to be wrong. Diagnosis: "Some kids just spit." They were happy and fine and not affected by the chunkage. It quit around 9 months.
She is adorable!
I had the same thing with my son. I wore vomit for a full year. The best is when you have a stream of it down your back on a black sweater and unknowingly go out to a nice grown up dinner wearing spit up. Good times.
She is so cute though....
Oh, poor baby. Poor mommy.
We spent last night covered in puke in the greatest pukefest yet, round these parts, and I have not yet recovered. So I cannot imagine going through it regularly. I hope whatever you do end up doing helps. And that it's not recalled.
Good golly, it must be like being stuck in an endless frat party after the keg has long run out and they are dabbling with aftershave. I'm so very sorry and have absolutely no advice, just a shoulder to cry on (or spit up on because I'd let her do it to me, she's that cute).
You're brave for still wearing clothes that need dry cleaned! I don't even have pukers and I don't buy anything that can't be thrown in the washer. But a girl's gotta look good right?
She's so adorable! Great pics.
Did you guys try Zantac? (I feel like we're all throwing advice at you to see what sticks!) Not the liquid which smells like Jagermeister, but the dissolvable tablets. I can't handle my kids throwing up without throwing up right there with them, so I was really, really into the medicine to get through reflux.
She is too cute though.
I have mommy-brain and can't recall the first year and a half of my twins life much less how I treated anything they had. But I can certainly sympathize with being around puke too much - I mean the smell alone makes me HAVE to puke or retch or something. EEeeeeewwwwww! Blessedly she is 100% divine.
Hey it looks like you got a lot of helpful responses, so I'll just add two things. First - she's absolutely precious!! Second, for super nasty tasting meds we put a squirt of grenadine in the medicine - it's that cherry flavored stuff they put in Shirley Temples. My son would take any med we offered if it was spiked with that stuff!
My twins were pukers. I think we gave them prilosec. I remember my son spitting it out at me when I gave it to him at first and my friend suggested that as I squirted into the side back of his mouth, I should blow on his nose. She said something about that makes a kid swallow. It did work but I have no idea if that is because of that or just because he gave up fighting after a while. Good luck! I remember the puking like it was yesterday and they will be 9 in May!
Delurking to recommend gripe water, too! Good stuff. Nectar of the gods, truly.
Good luck!
My daughter was a puker until I quit drinking caffeine. One day after I cut out the caffeine, it all stopped. I wish it hadn't taken me 5 months to figure that out!
She sounds just like mine minus the back-arching. Mine projectiles all the time and it drives me batty. I can't go anywhere without a cloth for clean-up and a change of clothes for both of us. A thicker formula (Enfamil Thickened) seemed to help a little bit, but the pukage still happens. She's a little younger than yours at 3 1/2 months.
My son did the same thing for pretty much the first 8 months of his life. Then one day he just stopped.
I thought he'd grown out of it but he's 19 months old and it looks like it's back...
When he was really little the doctor insisted it was acid reflux and the medication never did a thing for him so I stopped giving it to him.
I know it sounds crazy but I was SURE that it was because I was drinking milk and eating dairy products and he was a breast-fed baby.
My doctor told me that it just wasn't possible for that to be what was going on but I cut dairy out of my diet and that's when he stopped all the puking...
Mother's intuition? Coincidence?
Guess I'll never know...
Now I'm certain it's because he has a sensitive gag reflex. He can just look at food and gag and then vomit.
*sigh*
The joys.. and smells.. of motherhood lol
:)
We went through this exact same thing with Ian. He was projectile vomiting eight times a day. Every. Day. He even had to do a Barium swallow.
It turns out he just had a valve that wasn't flapping right. Eventually it finished growing or fixed itself. It slowed waaaaay down at nine months and then went away completely.
For a while he was on Zantac (I think it was Zantac) just to help with the discomfort.
Post a Comment