I’ve been trying to capture a smile in a picture for quite a while now, so of course when I finally got one was in his bouncy seat which he loves.  He pretty quickly figured out that the seat bounces when he kicks his feet, so now as soon as you put him in the seat, those feet start going.  You can see that it is a lot of fun.

Today Daniel is two months old.  It’s hard to believe.  We didn’t get any pictures because we didn’t have a good day.

As Daniel gets older, the debilitating side effects of Zantac are becoming more and more obvious.  After a while you begin to wonder if the cure is worse than the disease.  So yesterday evening we decided to not give his Zantac dose and see a) if his reflux was still as severe as it was at three weeks and b) what the side effects truly are.

It became obvious that his reflux and acid were just as bad and cost him severe pain, so we put him back on it today. We were also able to determine that these are truly Zantac side effects:

• Insomnia – the most sleep that Daniel manages to get in a day is 8 hours, where he should be getting 16 hours. Once he did not have Zantac, he slept almost continuously (except for waking up with acid in his throat).
• Stomach cramps – these usually start about an hour after he eats and cause him severe pain.
• Anxiety – this causes him to need to be held most of the time, and to be impatient.
• Aggravation of colic – without Zantac, his colic period was just a few hours. With Zantac he is colicky all day.

The only drug alternative our pediatricians can offer also has undesireable side effects, and our specific pediatrician is out of the office right now. Papa has an appointment with her on the 7th. Even if we can find another drug, Daniel will have to overlap Zantac with it for two weeks, so he has at least three more weeks of misery ahead of him.

Just to recap his current issues:

• It’s almost impossible to take him out right now. He becomes really anxious for two days or more if overstimulated.
• He can’t handle big routine change-ups right now. Uncle Daniel and Aunt Alice, the wonderful people they are, offered to babysit today while we went out and had a proper sit-down meal together. We were all set to take them up on that, but around noon it became obvious that with his hyper-anxiety from our experiment it wasn’t going to work out today.
• Mama can’t go anywhere right now. She has to hold him most of the day, and is only sleeping when Mimi or Papa sit with him during the day. Her normal sleeping hours are 7:20am until 1pm. In order for Papa to go to church on Sunday, she has to split her sleeping shift. She gets even less effective sleep that way, though, and it’s only worked out once in the last 9 weeks.
• He needs to be handled more than is comfortable. He has to be kept upright for an hour after each bottle, and the only way to relieve his colic (and even then for only a minute or two) is to hold him and constantly change his position.
• His poor mama is at her limit. She’s not sleeping or eating well, and people are telling her she’s failing. They’ve never heard of a mother needing help for more than a week or two, or they’ve never experienced a baby with Daniel’s extensive problems.

It’s been a rough couple of months, but also a time of joy and wonder we could never have imagined before. Please keep us in your prayers, and by God’s grace we’ll make it through this!

I try to just post the happy times.  Because of that, it looks like we only have happy times.  Quite the contrary is true.  I actually grab the camera and snap pictures during any good times I can.

Little Daniel has a hard time.  Life is not easy for him at all.  Here are the issues:

• Reflux – we treat the reflux with Zantac.  Zantac has quite a few drawbacks, but other treatments have even worse side effects.  Daniel can’t handle a lot of additives that are in medications. The Zantac doesn’t get rid of the reflux, that just makes what comes up not burn and hurt.  He still gets choked.  He could still get fluid in his lungs if we don’t take care with how we feed and handle him.  To try to minimize these symptoms as much as possible we do the following:
  • Change his diaper before feeding.  That way he is only on his back with an empty stomach.  If he has a leak or blowout at other times, we have to carefully change him keeping him from laying flat on his back.  That can be quite the workout.
  • Feed him in a slightly elevated position and keep him from eating too fast.  He can still sometimes choke and we sit him up to help him recover.
  • Keep him upright for 20 to 30 minutes after he eats.  This gives the milk time to move on from the stomach.
  • Tummy sleeping – this is a big faux pas today with the whole Back to Sleep campaign.  Tummy sleeping helps keep his milk down and also keeps him from getting choked on spit up.
  • Feeding less, and more often.  Most babies his age have started sleeping a stretch at night or have extended times between feedings.  Bigger feedings increase reflux, so he does better eating less but more times a day.  He eats every three hours.
• Colic – the great infant mystery.  There are lots of theories as to what causes colic, and I suppose it could be diffent causes in different babies.  Daniel begins to get fussy in the afternoon, but it increases to absolute misery between midnight and 3:30 a.m.  Even if he can remain somewhat calm at night, he can’t sleep, and is therefore very sleep deprived.  Zantac can cause anxiety and headaches, so we don’t know if that is making colic even worse.
• Gas – Daniel has suffered with gas from the beginning.  Zantac slows down his digestive system, so it makes the gas worse and makes it hard for Daniel to pass the gas.  Sometimes Daniel screams with pain.
• Sleep – because of colic and Zantac side effects, Daniel has a hard time sleeping.  He sleeps the best in the morning with it becoming more and more difficult the further he gets into his colic hours.  He looks tired almost all of the time.  There are so many pitures I haven’t posted because he looks so tired.

All this takes it’s toll on Mama.  Daniel has so much pain and discomfort it breaks my heart and is very hard to bear.  In addition to his already rigorous schedule, since he can’t nurse, I have to pump in between his feedings.  I spend nearly all my time dealing with things regarding his feeding.  I’m either pumping, feeding him, keeping him elevated after feeding, or cleaning his bottles.  During a majority of the day, I’m trying to do all these things while holding him because he’s either fussing, screaming or tired and can’t sleep.

One of the few things keeping me alive is that my mom comes over on the week days and takes care of Daniel from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. so that I can get a little sleep and get a couple of things done.  Papa gives me this nap on the weekends.  This is the only sleep I get.  The rest of the time is pretty intense with a sad/pained infant and the stress of keeping up with pumping and feeding.

Sorry to be a downer, but I thought you needed the rest of the story.

Daniel went for his two month checkup today.  He enjoyed admiring himself in the mirror on the wall by the examination table.  He was 11 pounds 6 ounces and 22.75 inches.  He impressed everyone with his skills.  They said his development is really good.

Daniel’s little smiles are so quick they are really hard to catch in a picture.  We usually just get the tail end of them.  Here is Daniel having some happy time in the kitchen with Papa.  As you can see, he’s got really good head control.

Daniel has infant reflux.  This usually begins to manafest itself around 2 weeks of age.  We knew he had it because he would get very upset after eating.  Soon we could smell the acid on his breath.  We could tell from his crying that he was in pain.

So at three weeks of age, Daniel started on Zantac, and it has been both a blessing and a curse.

The blessing – the Zantac reduces the acid in his stomach so that his reflux doesn’t burn and hurt anymore.  He still has the reflux.  Because of the reflux we keep him upright for at least 20 to 30 minutes after feeding him.  We also feed him somewhat elevated.  We can’t lay him on his back until at least an hour after he eats or longer.  The reflux also causes him to choke easily, so we have to be careful feeding him.  We’ve had to change to premie nipples because the infant nipples flowed too quickly and tended to get him choked frequently.

The curse – there are several.  Since Zantac reduces stomach acid, it slows his whole system down.  He has stomach discomfort and gas because everything is just slow and backed up.  Zantac also probably makes him a bit edgy and nervous.  We also have to give him the Zantac twice a day, sometime between an hour and twenty minutes before he eats. That’s the part that resulted in this photo.  When I gave him the Zantac he decided it was time to eat and he had to wait twenty minutes.  He got really upset and is trying to comfort himself by sucking his thumb.

With some very close supervision from Papa, Daniel is having some sit up time in his Moses basket.

I don’t think Daniel knows it yet, but he has a guardian kitty.

After much effort and frustration, it became apparent that Daniel was most likely not going to nurse.  So a couple of weeks ago, we just decided to get realistic about it and just deal with it.  Up to this point we had been using a special bottle that is supposed to work more like nursing so that he wouldn’t forget how to (not that he ever really learned to in the first place).  We thought that this bottle might be contributing to his gas problems because he seemed to take a lot of air with it.  Once we started getting realistic about the nursing issue, we decided to switch to Dr. Brown’s Natural Flow bottles.  It was an amazing difference.  Daniel still gets gas, but not nearly to the magnitude as before.  I have learned to love Dr. Brown.

Here is Daniel having some of Mama’s finest in his Dr. Brown bottle.

Can you believe our little boy is eight weeks old today?  I certainly can’t believe it.  Here are some pictures that his Mimi took of him in the front yard.

Poppy got Daniel a new tub, so we had to try it out.  Check out the piggy belly.