When I started NaBloPoMo, I was a spo­radic blog­ger at best. At worst, I some­times let my blog go for *cough* months *cough cough* with­out writ­ing any­thing. After NaBloPoMo, I was pretty ener­gized as far as blog­ging goes. I saw how quickly and eas­ily I could put some­thing up. I liked the feed­back I got from com­ments and friends and fam­ily. What could stop me from blog­ging 20+ times a month, right?

My son.

I’m not try­ing to say that in a mean way. He is sim­ply a high needs baby, and he takes a lot of time and energy to par­ent. If you’ve read my pre­vi­ous blogs, you know that I’ve been deal­ing with a dairy sen­si­tiv­ity and some sleep issues. Well, we are still deal­ing with the dairy sen­si­tiv­ity and sleep issues. I have tried a few times to intro­duce dairy back into my diet with the same results each time. A cries and screams while arch­ing his back for 30–45 min­utes. Not worth it. The sleep issues have changed a bit though. When A was younger, I was often up with him for 30, 45, 60, or 90 min­utes while he was fig­ur­ing out that night just isn’t the time to be up and play. Thank­fully he seems to have real­ized that night isn’t a good time to play and be up. He has, how­ever, gone from wak­ing 2–4 times a night to wak­ing 7 times or more.

In talk­ing with some other mom friends of mine, they sug­gested that since he has a dairy sen­si­tiv­ity, he may also have other sen­si­tiv­i­ties that affect his sleep. For a few months now, I’ve con­sid­ered this and ignored the pos­si­bil­ity. I finally decided to do some­thing about it. Unfor­tu­nately for me, that some­thing is the Elim­i­na­tion Diet. So, for the past 2 days, I’ve eaten noth­ing but chicken and jas­mine rice. I’ve had noth­ing but water to drink. My mom friends told me that if this was going to be some­thing that worked for A, I would notice results in 1–3 days. Well, last night, we did not notice any results. I’m hop­ing for some sort of change tonight.

In all the infor­ma­tion that I read about the elim­i­na­tion diet, I have read that it takes up to two weeks for it to work. To be hon­est, I don’t know if I can do chicken and rice only for two weeks. I don’t love chicken, and I’m start­ing to hate rice (well, not hate). I am not really sure what to do, though. I can’t keep get­ting up with him five or more times a night (Jason usu­ally gets up the other 2–3) and par­ent­ing both him and K dur­ing the day, but I also don’t know if I can sur­vive while tan­dem nurs­ing if all I’m eat­ing is rice and chicken. It doesn’t seem healthy for long term nutrition.

So, that’s mostly why I haven’t been all that active on my blog. Hope­fully, I will be able to increase my post­ing fre­quency as A gets older, starts solids in the next month or two, and gives me some cute funny sto­ries to post.

Do you read my blog? If your answer to these ques­tions is yes, leave me a com­ment with your blog and I will add you to my blogroll.

Well, it’s been three months now, that I have been reg­u­larly avoid­ing dairy. I started when A was about three over four weeks old, we started notic­ing that his evenings were very fussy, and some­times he was cry­ing incon­solably for well over 30 min­utes. I had been talk­ing to my sister-in-law about her baby who is just four days younger than Asa. She said that she noticed when she had a Dairy Queen Bliz­zard, her baby was much fussier. I thought about it, and I real­ized I ate and drank a LOT of foods with dairy in them. I decided to start avoid­ing dairy to see if we’d notice a dif­fer­ence. We did almost imme­di­ately. In the begin­ning, though, I strug­gled to find foods to eat that were dairy free since so much of my diet had revolved around dairy.

We sus­pected that A’s issues included a dairy sen­si­tiv­ity, but he also has some reflux to deal with. Once we felt we had the reflux under con­trol, I tried a few times to intro­duce dairy back into my diet, and each time it was met with cry­ing, fuss­ing, and tummy aches. Poor guy. So, each time, I imme­di­ately elmi­nated it again with pos­i­tive results.

Now, we’re three months down the road from the ini­tial deci­sion for me to avoid dairy. A is much hap­pier, and I am shocked that one can sur­vive with­out things like ice cream, cream of mush­room soup in casseroles, ice cream, milk in cereal, and ice cream. I’m hop­ing that for his sake, it’s only a sen­si­tiv­ity and not an allergy and that he will out­grow it soon.

My poor baby! He has reflux, and we are now try­ing our sec­ond med­i­cine. The first was fairly easy to give, tasted ter­ri­ble, and it didn’t work as well as we had hoped. He seemed to show improve­ment, but after tak­ing it for a cou­ple weeks, he started to show signs of pain and dis­com­fort after feed­ings again.

We talked to A’s doc­tor, and she sug­gested that we try a new med­i­cine. She pre­scribed Pre­vacid for him. We got pack­ets of Pre­vacid pow­der with instruc­tions to mix them with two ounces of liq­uid. Because of his age (4 1/2 months), we are using breast­milk. Well, A is not exactly a will­ing par­tic­i­pant in this whole med­i­cine sit­u­a­tion. He does not want the med­i­cine. He doesn’t want it in a syringe, drop­per, bot­tle, spoon, or from a sup­ple­men­tal nurser. He either clamps his mouth shut and won’t open it or he is cry­ing, cough­ing, and chok­ing on it when we put it into his mouth.

Two ounces is a lot of liq­uid to get into a lit­tle per­son when that per­son is not happy about it. Now, if he were nurs­ing, I’m pretty sure he could get two ounces in just about five min­utes. Right now, Jason is try­ing to give him his med­i­cine. After about 15 min­utes of actively dis­play­ing his dis­plea­sure, he is now star­ing Jason down with his mouth pursed shut.

I’m so frus­trated with all of this reflux stuff! If he doesn’t have his med­i­cine, he cries after feed­ings, fusses dur­ing the day, and he cries incon­solably in the evenings. When we give him Zan­tac, he is still fussy and uncom­fort­able because of the acid. Now, try­ing to give him Pre­vacid is almost as mis­er­able as the reflux itself!

I hap­pen to agree with this post quite strongly, but I know that there are oth­ers who dis­agree just as strongly as I agree. Any­way, I find it good food for though, prob­a­bly because I like what she’s saying.