As you may remember O has been on and off reflux medicine since he was about a month old. We had to put him back on Zantac around 4 1/2 months, when he started eating foods until his tummy got used to the new foods we were intrducing. I took him off around 5 1/2-6 months because I thought he was doing better and I just hate giving him so much medicine being this young. Well, aparently I was wrong!
Owen has never slept through the night but up until I took him off his meds he was only getting up once maybe twice at the most each night. It just so happened that he got sick a few weeks after we took him off the meds and that's when the sleeping went downhill for O. His doctor mentioned that when babies are really sick that it screws up their sleep schedules and it may take a few weeks to get him back on schedule. Fast forward to 2 months later, still not on a sleeping schedule and has been getting up 5+ times a night and can't put himself back to sleep. This = very exhausted parents. We read everything on how to get him to sleep, tried every method and listened to everyones advice and nothing worked. When he woke up I would have to go in and pick him up and he would fall back to sleep on my shoulder.
I was a mess, crying thinking where did I go wrong and what could I have done to make him now need me at night. I was praying for a night like before he got sick where we would only get up once.
Finally a breakthrough...thanks Jenn Urban for listening to me and then telling me about her friend who has a 15month old that was sleeping just like Owen. Her friend's son had just started new meds for reflux...yes that evil word, refulx!
I did a ton of reading online and learned soooo much about "silent reflux" and made a doctor's appt for the next week. Forgot to mention that O was soooooo congested that he couldn't breathe at night either which was making him wake up even more. So back to the reflux, turns out that silent reflux is just that, you don't notice the symptoms because they just act up at night (after laying down) and you may or may not see spitting up or bad tummy issues. Also, a huge problem with reflux is congestion...hello, why didn't I think about this before. Also excessive drooling, wet burps and mucusy spit-up...everything that O was doing. I read that I should cut out acidic foods at dinner, decrease the amount he drinks at night and elevate his bed. We also had a little zantac left from his old prescription so we gave him a dose and that night, magic happened! I am knocking on wood as I write this and am not "really" speaking of what happened that night but let's just say that we are going on 8 days of magic nights :) We're just hoping that this cured the problem and O is back on schedule...well an even better schedule!
I knew that something was going on, maternal instinct told me that and I am sooo glad I listened and didn't go through nights and nights of crying with the whole CIO method (which I have never been a fan of anyway). I just hate that I put O through 2 months of belly aches because I thought he was doing better and didn't need his meds...it's all a learning experience!
We went to the doctor today and I told Dr. Alice what was going on and all the reading I had done on silent reflux and she said I was absolutely right and we needed to start the zantac again and hopefully he would outgrow the need for it by 9 months. She was impressed that I had done everything and he was doing better but deep down I knew she was laughing at me...once again, over-the-top mom self-diagnosing....but I was right!
Reflux, you are evil, evil, evil!!
No comments:
Post a Comment