Acid Reflux

In between Christmas and New Year's we decided to schedule a doctor's appointment for Brittany. We went in the hopes that the doctor would let us try some medication for acid reflux. She had been up for 3 hours the night before crying inconsolably, and we couldn't take it anymore. Unfortunately, the inconsolable crying for two to four hours a might was not an uncommon thing. We usually got about one uninterrupted night of sleep a week, the other six we could depend on a screaming baby.

We went to our appointment, described the symptoms, and got a prescription for medication! This came as a big surprise because we had thought that Brit had acid reflux when she was a month old, but at that time when I asked the doctor, he wanted to do several tests before trying medication. This is all well and good; I think that overmedicating of children is a problem, and if there are other treatments available for my children I am very willing to give them an honest try. However, the first test he wanted to try was a lactose-intolerance test which involved bottle feeding her a lactose-free formula for at least one week. She was only four weeks old and we were actually doing great with nursing, so I was worried. The bottle feeding went fine, but when I tried to rent a decent pump to keep up my milk supply, I found that they were about $100 a week. Very discouraging. So I decided to give up nursing.

In the end she was not lactose intolerant, so we were back to square one and I was now buying formula. Those of you who have not had the experience of having a very fussy, irritable, five-week-old baby, having to give up breast feeding against your will, being sleep deprived, and having an 18-month-old little boy who also needs a good deal of attention may not understand the amount of frustration and annoyance I felt toward our pediatrician. There were three or four more tests he wanted to try before medication for acid reflux, all of which I understood would take several days to a week to complete. In my frustrated state, I felt he wasn't listening to me and he didn't care that my baby cried constantly and I was ready to pull my hair out. So, instead of dealing with all of that, I decided that she had colic and she would get better at around three months. I must be wasting my time with more doctor's visits. (In my doctor's defense, medicating a one month old baby for acid reflux can mask symptoms of more serious digestive disorders. He may or may not have explained this to me at the time, I do not remember.)

Finally, Brittany turned three months old. The "colic" did not disappear. In a phone conversation with my mom, she told me that when my brother Justin was a baby he had colic. Her doctor at the time informed her that a small, "lucky" percentage of babies with colic had it for four months instead of three. So maybe Brittany was one of those lucky ones! At her 6 month checkup we saw a different doctor, and after explaining her symptoms, I was told that some babies just cry, and if it's at night I should just leave her alone for longer and longer amounts of time until she learned to put herself to sleep. I guess he hadn't understood when I told him that she usually screamed for 2-4 hours at night until she was finally so exhausted she fell to sleep. Jared and I had actually put her playpen in the finished part of the basement where we couldn't hear her as well so we could get a little sleep.

Around December Brittany started spitting up again, and I remembered that I once thought she might have acid reflux... And, that brings us back to the beginning of the post. Since she's been on the meds, she's been a different little girl! She's happy, charming, and likes to giggle, sing, and crawl around the house chasing Sam or Wally. Best of all, everyone in the house is getting SLEEP! We're all much happier. Sam as well has turned back into a happy, cute little boy.

Thank goodness for modern medicine!