The Appointment

It went well. I guess I'll keep her. ;) In brief...or as brief as I can ever be, I'll relate the day.

I woke up, fed her and she went down for a nap right away. Just enough time for me to wash my hair in the tub with baby shampoo (I was afraid I wouldn't have time for conditioner), get dressed, put away some laundry, get the diaper bag ready, check my list of questions and finally get the baby ready. When I finally picked her up I saw that she had taken a giant dump and ... had probably taken it a little while ago because it was sort of like ... dryish clay. You know, crumbly but if you touch it it readily smears...anyway. There was a good roll of it under her onsies and of course her outfit was wet. Those onsies...I tell you, they are a godsend for containing poopsplosions. But hey, that means this is now two days in a row that she had taken a poop! That's improvement!

We made it to the appointment, and were seen. I was ready for battle, I tell you. I felt like I had prepared for this all night. I had my arguments ready...and yet at the same time she kept asking what I wanted and I didn't tell her. What did I want? I wanted her off xantax and on prevacid. Something that has been shown to actually make a difference with her reflux -- which I think is making this those aspirating thing worse...and at the very least making Morella super uncomfortable. I was going to tell her this, but at the same time I wanted her to recommend it. Isn't that what a good peditrician does? She finally said "What do you want?"

"I want to reduce the stomach acid in her stomach," I replied.
"Okay then, we'll put her on a proton-pump inhibitor," she answered and then added "You can tell me what you want to happen."

Hm. I guess I'll keep that in mind, but at the same time -- I would have told her eventually.

Anyway. She fed her, we agreed that honey consitency is nasty, and Morella barfed some of it up. She said "It looks thicker coming up! Maybe we should thin it more."

I said "No, the point is that it should be thick enough for her to swallow -- that is the whole point of this goop."

I am loosing steam for relating the whole thing bit by bit. So instead"

--She is on prevacid now. A quarter of a pill twice a day. I have six pills...so that is what? A 12 day supply. If this works then we will work on a compounding method to make the medicine easier to give to her. God I hope it works.

--She is on an elemental formula: A nutritional supplement in which proteins are in a 'predigested' peptide or amino-acid form called Alimentum. She gave me four sample cans of it to try out.

--I am to feed her the thickened formula, two ounces, frequently throughout the day. Of course this is addition to her sitting up to eat it, and staying up for at least 30 minutes afterward and burps on the shoulder after every ounce. She is also supposed to take a little break between ounces to give it time to settle.

--I should continue to pump because apparently the specialist thought that she would outgrow this (and the pediatrician concurs). I hope that is the case! I didn't realize that this appointment would take so long by the time I got home 6 and 1/2 hours had passed and I was engorged. I guess I'll wait and see what Monday has to show.

--Morella has an appointment with a highly regarded ENT on Monday. She is first going to do another mini barium study with a speech pathologist and someone else and then see the ENT. The appointment is at 9:00 at the new fancy Children's Hospital.

So, I guess I feel happy. The pediatrician admitted that she could count on one hand the amount of babies that she has seen in her experience who were silent aspirators. So it's rare! Morella is special that way.... :P Maybe that is why she was more open to talking and I got everything I wanted. Bonus is that I got four free sample cans of the elemental formula (which the specialist had told the pediatrician to tell us to use). I hope this predigested food agrees with Morella better, and the prevacid has an effect and that she is feeling better by Monday.

On the way home I stopped at McDonald's and had some grub. Heather came over to visit later and brought cookies! I watched an episode of Voyager and got two more pumping sessions in. I feed Morella another couple ounces and she didn't barf and actually went to sleep. I managed to do dishes. I am having a beer and wishing I had another.

That said, I have posted some more photos of Morella in the gallery for her 6 week mark. Go here to see them. Here is one of my favorites (though it's so hard to choose!):