This morning, I knew exactly what I wanted to blog about. My Facebook brought up my posts from this day last year, and today was the day I took Brady on a surprise trip to Las Vegas 🙂 So much fun was being had at this time last year!! Laela was a week or two away from walking on her own, which was also pretty significant for us. Good times, definitely.
But as this evening has come on, I have something entirely different to write about. Rowan. Rowan and his ridiculous feedings.
Rowan was an ok eater at the beginning of his life. He never cared too much to cuddle and fall asleep drinking his milk. It wasn’t a comfort thing for him, really. It was eating to keep himself alive and his tummy comfy, but that was it, as far as we could tell. In the last few months, though, he has become a total disaster to feed. Loving friends and family have tried, but getting more than four ounces into him at once was a big challenge. People would pass him back after less than two ounces and insist that he was full. But we knew him, and knew how much he COULD eat. In the middle of the night, when he’s sleeping through his bottles, he will eat eight to ten ounces. It is SO frustrating. If he would eat those big feedings in the day, he’d likely be sleeping through the night without a problem. So needless to say, we’ve been struggling.
Only within the last couple of days have I started to get an itch that maybe I need to be concerned. Some babies have reflux, and throw up a ton. But did you know there is a thing called “silent reflux,” where they feel all the same things – the acid, the burning, the sick tummy – but they don’t throw up? It can sit unnoticed for a while, but babies that are born with it are usually diagnosed with it within the first two months. I added up a lot of the symptoms I was seeing in Rowan, and it seemed pretty possible. He was very hungry, but upon laying him back and putting the bottle in his mouth, he would scream and wail and fight to the death NOT to drink his bottle. If we could get him to drink, it was around four ounces before he would have a total throw down that he couldn’t come down from. Would. Not. Do. It. That paired with lots of other little symptoms made me really worried. I lost some sleep over it last night, anticipating todays appointment with Dr. Mike. I hoped to God that he would tell me I was barking up the wrong tree and send me on my way.
*** Side note: Just because I’m confident some people are thinking it, we have no changed bottles or formula ever along the way. He doesn’t hate his bottle or his milk. Trust me, I know.
When we got into Dr. Mikes office, he started with Rowan. Brady and I were there for treatments as well, thanks to the laundry machine debacle, but Rowan was new, so he started there. He asked lots of questions and didn’t downplay my worries. He did encourage me, though, not to go to the weirder ideas before we’ve ruled out all of the common ones. He had a nice way of making me feel heard but comfortable.
He immediately went to Rowans face and played with him a little bit. Rowan has juuust started to occasionally make strange, but he loved Dr. Mike! It did my heard good to see him laugh through his entire treatment. We’ve taken all of our kids to Dr. Mike at one point or another, and he is SO gentle. He has always been able to sort of gently squeeze/massage parts of their backs to help them back into place, but my goodness, Rowan CRACKED. Not in a bad way AT ALL, but in a very significant way. Rowan thought it was hilarious, and laughed. Dr. Mike was happy too 🙂 He handed him back to us.
I was relieved and saddened when he told us Rowans back is basically a mess. In between his shoulder blades was rock hard, he said, and he was incredibly twisted one way. He said its not new, so he’s likely been in some form of pain or discomfort for a few months now. I felt guilty that I didn’t think to take him in sooner, but I know I can’t waste a ton of time being sorry. We can just move on and get him all fixed up.
When he was handed back to me, he was SO floppy! His body is so loose! He’s not turned or stiff or anything! I’m actually a bit shocked. What I thought was him having epic muscle tone was actually a knotted back. Apparently he doesn’t have much muscle tone at all, haha! At least not from what I can tell right now.
Since bringing Rowan home, I fed him a nice big bottle. He didn’t finish it quite, but he didn’t fight it. At the end, when he spat it out, I tried to offer it back, just in case, like always. Usually that throws him into an epic meltdown and he screams and knocks the bottle out of my hand and everyone gets covered in milk and its just really frustrating for all involved. But tonight, he just looked at me, smiled, and pushed it back out of his mouth with his little tongue. No fight, no crying. Just no more milk. SO MUCH BETTER. So not that it needs to be said, but he will be seeing Dr. Mike again very soon, and we will be changing a few little things that are maybe encouraging him to be a little one-sided, so to speak. I hope and pray that he continues to get better. I sure wish I had thought of Dr. Mike treating Rowan sooner, but I’m very glad we thought of it now.