Spring Break

For those of you who don't know, I'm getting my Post-Bac teaching licensure from UVU. I will be doing my student teaching about this time next year. But what's cool about this is that for the first time since I graduated high school, I get almost a week off of school for spring break! It actually ended up being a bit more because I had to go into a classroom and teach for a couple days so the education department gives their students an extra week off of classes. Cool, huh? Well, spring break officially started yesterday. And how did I start my spring break? With surgery. That's right, the first time I've ever had surgery, or even stitches for that matter (besides the ones I got with Emmalee) was on spring break.
My surgery was a pretty simple one. I had to have my gallbladder out. I have been having attacks for about the last 14 months. Each time I get one they get worse. I was in the ER both Saturday and Sunday this last week. After the second or third attack the only thing that helps take the pain away is morphine. On Sunday they had to give me Dillodan (I'm not sure of the spelling) which is evidently pretty much morphine but 10 times stronger. On Sunday the ER doctor decided to do an ultrasound because my liver enzymes were very high (and have been for almost two years) and on the ultrasound they saw a nice pile of stones in my gallbladder. He wanted to do an emergency surgery, but the on-call surgeon didn't think I was quite bad enough. So yesterday I went in for an outpatient surgery and he took it out. They gave us some pictures, and on the picture of my gallbladder cut open Joel counted 33 gallstones, but there were probably more because it looked like they went on outside the picture (like they were falling all over the place). We figured it we kept going to the ER with every gallstone we would have ended up paying $4,950 in ER copays alone. We didn't go to the ER for every attack, but the last couple ones they had to give me IV's because I wasn't holding anything down. I had Lortab prescribed, but every time I had an attack I started vomiting profusely, even if I took an anti-nausea medicine as soon as I started feeling uncomfortable.
I feel okay today, I've definitely had better days, but all things considered I think I'm doing pretty well. I'm sore, and it's hard to pick up Emmalee (which I'm not supposed to be doing anyways) but other than that it's really not too bad. This is way better than having my attacks. It got to the point that passing a gallstone hurt worse than labor (but then I did have an epidural for labor).
On happier notes, Emmalee is officially over to her new formula and quite likes it. Even without her appetite stimulant she eats much more than she did with her appetite stimulant for the other formula. She is over 16 lbs now (we think), and she is getting quite the little pot-belly. She not only eats a lot more formula, but she also eats more baby food. She now eats between 6-8 ounces of baby food every meal! I love it. And she is such a happy fun baby. I truely feel blessed. She sleeps through the night (most of the time) eats enough that she is still growing on her growth curve (she has one now:) and is such a happy baby. She is so fun to play with. We are staying at my in-laws right now while I am recovering and she loves playing with grandma and grandpa. While grandma was giving her her bath tonight she was having the best time splashing the water and blowing raspberries. I love my baby!

Do you know the Muffin Man?

Well, Emmalee does. Last Saturday while I was at work, Daddy and Emmalee were having quite the day at home. On Friday we had picked up a dozen of Costco's oversized muffins for breakfasts and snacking. Well, Joel was enjoying Saturday afternoon when he realized it was time to come pick me up from work. So he put the muffin on a bookshelf he didn't think Emmalee could reach in the living room, then left her in the living room to play with toys while he went to get ready to come pick me up. Where there's a will, there's a way. When he came back in the living room, she was not playing with toys. She was on the floor in front of the bookshelf eating his muffin. And from what he tells me she was quite enjoying it. The last time Emmalee had milk-based formula she broke out in hives and rashes, was vomiting blood (not a lot, but enough to worry me, it would more blood tinged spit up than actual blood), and had a very difficult time breathing. This muffins not only contained the dreaded milk, but also wheat, soy and egg. Allergy city. He grabbed her up, washed her mouth out thoroughly and washed her hands (which had been her utensil of choice while stuffing her face) and called me. I was worried so I called the pediatricians office. The nice nurse told me if Emmalee had any signs of breathing difficulty at all to rush her straight to the ER, and not to let her fall asleep for at least two hours, even if she was acting okay.

After all of our stress, something amazing happened. Well, actually nothing happened. That's what was so amazing about it. We hung out at the hospital for about half an hour after I got off work just so that we'd already be there if need be, but she was completely fine. I was so relieved! So was Joel, who was feeling pretty bad by this point. I was actually pretty pleased about the incident because I have been growing increasingly uncomfortable about her being on Neocate for so long. Neocate is a completely Amino Acid based medical formula which has been keeping the allergy monsters at bay with Emmalee. After the muffin incident I gave her pediatric G.I. doctor a call to discuss the idea of maybe changing her formula. So today we officially changed her formula to Nestle Good Start Protect Plus. It's a milk based formula with whey hydrolysate proteins, so partially broken down proteins, for easier digestion and added probiotics. He GI doctors thinks that she will benefit from the added probiotics because of all of her stomach problems. So far everything is going well with it and she doesn't seem to have any reactions to it. Her doctor said he was pleasantly surprised to hear about her lack of reaction to the muffin. He said he normally expects most of his patients to outgrow their allergies between 9-12 months, but he wasn't expecting her to outgrow hers--at all. He pediatrician was also positive she would never outgrow her dairy allergy. We still don't know about soy (she had a bad reaction to soy formula as well) but that was also in the muffin, so who knows.

I'm hoping that this is a good sign and our pleasure over this won't be short-lived. I so happy that my baby is no longer miserable all the time! I also feel lucky that she outgrew (hopefully) her allergy so quickly. She is eight months right now which is still pretty young. I'm so grateful that her colic and most of her growing problems have finally ended (or at least they seem to have ended). I know so many people who have had to deal with it for so much longer. She is still on one of her medications, but going from around 5 down to one is okay with me. She is on cyproheptadine which is an antihistamine that is being used in her as an appetite stimulant. It seems to help calm her gut down and allow her to eat. We also still bring her to the chiropractor three times a week which I think has made a world of difference. Yay for professionals in their field who can help big people and little people feel better and help get their bodies to function properly!

Crawling, "walking", and no doctor's visit

Emmalee has actually been crawling for a while now. She started trying at 3 months and finally mastered it a couple of weeks ago. The day after she mastered crawling, she decided it was time to move on to walking. Luckily her muscles aren't strong enough to hold herself up yet, but she sure does try. First it was using my pant legs to pull herself into a standing position, then anything she could get her hands on. Then the problem was that she seemed to think that since she could "stand" she could walk. I watch my nephew (who is almost 2) during the week so I blame him for her trying to grow up too fast :) She sees him walking so she wants to (he's also the one who taught her to crawl). So she would pull herself up to standing, then try to turn around and walk. This always ends in tears! Poor thing, she just can't get all of the muscles to work together yet. Now she has discovered that if she holds onto something that she can move, then she can go almost anywhere she wants to. Joel and I had left her alone in the living room the other night and when we came back in she was in the middle of the living room pushing a box accross the flooor. She is so cute! We put her toys in old diaper boxes because we're too cheap to get a toy box so she goes over to her toys, empties the box, and then pushes it around the room so she has something to hold on to while she walks! We are in big trouble once she starts walking because I think running won't be too far behind. She's not even seven months old yet! This is how we found her in the living room the other night.

I am also very happy to say that we have only seen our pediatrician once in the last month, and that was for her 6 month well child check. She responded to her shots better than ever (no fever and very little crankiness). Right after her check-up with the shots we brought her to her chiropractor for an adjustment which probably helped. Just a plug, I highly reccommend chiropractic for children. I was EXTREEMLY skeptical at first, but it has helped her SOO much. We have not been to the doctors office for a sick visit since she started going to the chiropractor. The crying stopped (she still crys when she's tired, doesn't feel well, etc but it's not all the time anymore), she's eating and sleeping well, she doesn't scream when she's in her car seat anymore, it's just wonderful. We did start an appetite stimulant at the same time, but I don't think it would have had these good of results before the chiropractor. I wish I had done this sooner! I would suggest chiropractic for anyone with a colicky baby. Joel also notice that she always seems to be starving after getting adjusted. She's actually EXCITED to see the bottle now. Which is so awesome.

I wish we had done this sooner because everything else we did seemed to help some, for a little while, but nothing seemed to really help that much. I wonder if we had done this from the beginning if I would have been able to keep breast-feeding instead of having to switch to the bottle. It's definitly something to keep in mind for next time (which won't be for a very long time).

So that's my plug for chiropractic, take it or leave it. I still immunize. This last time was a nice surprise because my doctor said since they don't get any shots at nine months he likes to spread the six month shots between the two visits so that they don't get as many at once. I like that a lot. He also suggested giving her a flu shot which I politely refused. We have had members in our family who have had negative reactions to the flu shot (including Joel), and I just don't think it's that necessary. His comment was that with how sick she's been the flu could be very dangerous. Which is why I got my flu shot and try to keep her away from sick people. But in the end the flu shot doesn't really make it so that you don't get the flu, it just lessens the symptoms. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the flu shot entirely (H1N1, maybe) I just don't want to give it to my six month old. I told him I would reconsider at one year. I also still love our pediatrician and hope to continue seeing him for a long time. I still consult with her GI doctor some, I trust him and know that he has a lot of knowledge, but I'm grateful that we don't have to talk as much anymore. But I am happy to have added chiropractic to her health care repertoire.

One pound in two weeks!

With Emmalee it seems like life is a constant roller-coaster. Just when I think her health has reached a turning point--it's time to nose-dive. About three weeks ago Emmalee had a very rough week. On Monday we went to the doctor's office for a consultation because one of my neices has Chiari Malformation type one which has very similar symptoms to what Emmalee has been going through and we were seeing if it would be worth it to check it out. He decided we should screen for it just to make sure. We set up an appointment for Friday of that week just to make sure. Well, Tuesday she cried all day, wouldn't eat, and had a fever so we went in again to make sure she didn't have an ear infection or anything. They said to keep an eye on her and make sure she didn't start vomiting more. Wednesday she vomited EVERYTHING and wouldn't eat and had not urinate for more than 8 hours so we got to go in again. She had white stuff in her throat so they did a strep culture, but it was negative. Thursday we were up at my in-laws and Joel and I had fallen asleep on couches so my Mother-in-law was putting Em down in her room since Emmalee had already fallen asleep as well. Well, she is quite the accomplished roller now and rolled off the bed and bonked her head and started screaming (of course) but more disturbing she started vomiting profusely (which she hadn't done all day, and she didn't have a fever Thursday so we thought she was doing better). My mother-in-law woke us up. I was a bit confused because I was still mostly asleep but she was throwing up and acting a bit funny. We decided to call the on-call nurse just to check and she said to bring her to the ER since she is so young. When we put her in her car-seat she fell asleep. Joel thought maybe we should call the nurse back because for adults you're supposed to keep them awake after a head bump and we weren't sure if the same rule applied for kids. The nurse said we didn't have to keep her awake, but to make sure that we could wake her up if we needed to, or just make sure that she responds. We were pinching her nose and cheeks and flicking her hands and wiggling her toes and ears and nothing. So we were a rather concerned on the way to the ER. Of course as soon as we got there she woke right up and was all smiles. They did a CT scan of her head and neck and everything looked fine. They said it was a mild concusion (which just means a bump on the head) and to keep an eye on her. My poor mother-in-law felt so bad! But Emmalee is perfectly fine and I think it just frightened her more than anything else. Well, Friday was the big day for the MRI on her brain. So we went to the hospital bright and early. She had to fast for it so she was a bit cranky about that. And they had to sedate her for the procedure. While they were trying to place the IV they blew two veins (that just means the vein "broke" because she was dehydrated and she's so little anyways) and finally got one in the arm. She was MAD! She screamed the whole time. They said the sedative should work quickly and the longest it would take was 15 minutes though they had never seen a baby take that long. Well, she took the full 15 minutes, they thought they were going to have to give her another sedative. She did wake up once during the procedure so they had to give her more sedative, but other than that it went really well. The MRI was fine and they didn't find anything abnormal. She was really tired the rest of the day and just wanted to cuddle, which I shamelessly enjoyed. That night after work I came home to what sounded like a barking seal! She was having a really rough time breathing, we were suctioning her nose out and standing with her in the bathroom with a hot shower going and putting her right over a humidifier and she was still just having a really tough time breathing. I finally called the on-call nurse and she said to bring her into the ER to have her checked out because she would most likely need breathing treatments. I got off the phone and cried. It was a really long week and I REALLY didn't want to see another doctor. When I went into the room to tell Joel he had finally gotten her to fall asleep and her breathing had calmed since she was calm. We decided if she woke up having troubles then we would take her in but we wanted to let her sleep. She slept through the night but was still having trouble Saturday morning so we brought her in then. The NP in the office said she had croup and gave her a shot to help open her lungs up. That helped A LOT! Sunday we stayed home from chuch because croup is highly contagious and our ward had a baby boom this summer and we didn't really want to get half the ward sick. Then Monday she decided to only eat two ounces even though her breathing was better and she had no fever so we got to see her doctor again. When we weighed her at that visit she had lost 11 ounces since the previous monday. We told her GI doctor and he said that if she didn't regain it by her 6 month birthday she would be put on a tube. Now to the title of my post. That was almost two weeks ago and we haven't had to bring her to the doctors office since then! Her Gi doctor put her on an anti-histamine which works as an appetite stimulant. It had worked wonders with her! She eats two to three times as much in a day as she used to. It's amazing! I went into the doctors office yesterday and asked if we could weigh her while we were there and she weighs a full pound more than she did at her last visit nearly two weeks ago! It's so exciting because she actually seems to like eating now. When she sees the bottle she gets really excited and starts reaching for it. I love it! It may just be another peak of the roller-coaster, but this peak has lasted for a while and I'm really enjoying it. Oh, and she started crawling. She more inch-worms than anything else. She can use all fours but she seems to prefer the inch-worm style. She's also been working on getting into a sitting position from crawling and she's getting good at it. My parents are in town because I've been having a really rough time with Emmalee. I've really enjoyed having my mom here to help out. It's been great to have her here and Emmalee absolutely loves her!

Clinically Proven to Reduce Colic

I have the perfect picture to go with this post, but it's on Joel's computer not mine so maybe I'll add it later. But just imagine a baby arched almost in half backwards, her face is bright red and her mouth is wide open becuase she's screaming. So in our search to restore peace to our home Joel and I have explored many different products that all claim to be proven to reduce colic in anywhere from 70-90% of babies. We started out with bottles: Playtex offers two type of bottles that they claim significantly reduce symptoms of colic. First, we tried VentAir, we already had these bottles from my sister-in-law so we thought we would give them a try. Unfortunately we could rarely get her to eat from them. We tried Colic Tablets, which we had heard many testimonials about their effectiveness. They seemed to make her symptoms worse! Later we found that this was actually because she is violently allergic to all forms of dairy and it's products, and colic tablets are in a lactose base. Then we tried Mylicon. She actually quite liked the mylicon, but she vomited so frequently that it seemed rare that it stayed in her system long enough to help. Then we tried Gripe Water (also known as Colic Water). This made her vomit profusely! But it did help diminish her gas. Then we tried Playtex Drop-Ins (another bottle). Then we moved on to medications: Tagament and Prevacid. And finally it was getting rid of breast milk altogether and going exclusively to Neocate, an infant formula that is classified as medical food because she was even allergic to hypo-allergenic formula. Anyways, the whole point of this is that after dealing with colic for four months Emmalee is finally starting to to get better! I'm not sure what combination helped, or it was just timing, but I am happy to say that my little girl cries a little less, and laughs a little more each day. She is truely the greatest joy of my life! And I thought I would share to newish pictures!

Another visit to the Doctor's office

Just when we thought we had figured things out Emmalee decided to have problems again.From 7 pm Tuesday night until 8:30 am on Wednesday Emmalee threw up everything she ate. This would normally b concerning, but most likely a stomach flu. When I called the office that's what the nurse said. I asked her how long they normally last and she said three to four days. I said it's been going on with her for the last 3-4 weeks and she's only 6 weeks old. She had also been constipated for 3 days over the weekend, which can be normal for babies her age, but I am a bit paranoid because of everything that has been going on. So Wednesday we went in to see the Doctor again, and he was even more concerned than I was (which is never a good sign when your pediatrician leaves the room to think). He said she was a bit dehydrated, most likely from all of the throwing up and because she was refusing to eat (if I threw everything up for 12 hours straight I probably wouldn't want to eat either). When he came back in the room after thinking he said it could be a number of things. It bothered him that rather than continuing to improve her symptoms were still getting worse. But at least she is gaining weight now, a bit slow but hey we'll take what we can get. He told me "don't take this personally, but you're going to have to stop breast feeding her and go exclusively to alimentum". Alimentum is similac's hypo-allergenic formula. She had been have chunks of mucos in her poop again which is a sign of an allergy of some sort. He also made an appointment at the hospital for her to have an ultrasound on Thursday to rule out pyloric stenosis (a condition where the pylorus thickens with scar tisue so that food can not pass from the stomach and can only be cured by surgery). Luckily when we went in for the ultrasound everything looked good there, she was just majorly bloated. A plus about being on the formula is that all of her infant acne/rash that was on her face, upper body, scalp and neck cleared up within 12 hours of being on it. And she seems much more content today than she did yesterday. The reason she's on formula is because the Doctor is worried about allergy, but also because she could have allergic colitis which is normally cleared up in infant by being on formula for about a week and then they can normally be put back on breast milk without recurrences of the problem. The formula soothes the colitis and gives it time to heal. If her syptoms don't improve after being on the formula for 10 days (he's going out of town for 10 days and doesn't want us reintroducing the breast milk until he's back) then she will have to go in to have a scope done of her upper GI. If that shows nothing, then we'll look at the lower GI. Until then she is on formula and two medications for acid reflux because just being on one wasn't controlling it.
On a more happy note: I love being a mom! Her smiles and coos (however rare or non-existant they may be on some days) are the best things in the world and make up for all of the screams and vomit. She really focuses on things with such intensity. Yesterday she was looking at the side of her swing for like 15 minutes and talking to it and smiling at it. My mother-in-law finally tied a baby doll to the side of the swing so that she would at least be talking to something other than the bar on her swing. I took a video of it with our camera so I'll have to post it later if I can figure out how. And though baths aren't her most favorite thing, she LOVES having her hair washed. Hopefully we can figure out what's making her so uncomfortable so she can just be colicky instead of colicky with pain. And so that she will start eating more.

Update on Emmalee

On Monday we saw the lactation consultant and Dr again for Emmalee, and the prognosis was not as happy as we were hoping. According to the lactation consultants scale she had gained just over an ounce, but later that day according to the Dr's scale she had lost about an ounce. He was concerned over the lack of weight gain, the weight loss and the fact that her stools were mucosy and had occasional black flecks in them. He said he wanted to see us again and if she hadn't started improving she would have to have an abdominal ultrasound and go off breastmilk. Between the appointments he told us to supplement every feeding with formula because my milk is fat-poor. And now her poop looks normal! (I know everyone was dying to know that) At her appointment today she had gained half a pound! So we don't have to do a follow-up appoinment or have an ultrasound! I do have to stay off of dairy at least until she's 3-4 months old. But I'm so happy that she's gained weight and is doing way better, and that we don't have to see the Dr again until her 2 month check-up. Dr Lauret said he would love to keep her on as his patient even though he is not accepting new patients right now. He also took her and showed her off to his billing office (just one room over) and they were all cooing over her hair (which has not yet fallen off). It was really cute.