Pages

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Hanging on for dear life

J sentence for the day: "I don't like black. Green better" said while eating leftover jelly beans. Articulate AND smart, because who really does like the black ones?

It's time for an E update. My once problem-free child has turned into a bit of challenge lately. His cough that may or may not have come from us has gotten worse and now he frequently coughs and then tries to keep coughing and ends up choking and not breathing and turning purple. It is NOT fun. I am getting very fitful sleep since these episodes happen at night as well as during the day and the only thing that seems to help his patting his back vigorously and reminding him to breathe. A visit to the doctor today let me hear the winning remark: "you know infant CPR right?" I left in tears (lack of sleep last night took its toll) with two prescriptions, a follow-up appointment, and the blithe comment "if I thought I was sending you home to do CPR, I would send you to the hospital instead." So, it appears things have to get worse before we can do more, and I need to brush up on my life saving skills.

In addition, E's congestion continues unchanged, or perhaps worse, and his reflux doesn't seem to be responding much to the medicine. The rice starch enriched formula only seems to make the discharge thicker, which hardly seems useful, since that just means when it comes out of his nose, as it does so frequently, the obstruction is more dense than it might otherwise be. E hates, LOATHES his car seat and will often cry himself into fits of spit-up/vomiting while in it, which makes driving loads of anxiety producing fun. Which means we are somewhat housebound until we get all of this under control. He is, thankfully, responding well to the teaspoon of prune juice the doctor suggested we add to his bottles, so there is SOME good news on the health front!

Despite all this, however, E is growing well and has now moved into 0-3 month clothes...sort of. You see, he is quite long for his age, so newborn clothes are just beginning to be unwearable, but he is also incredibly skinny, so 0-3 month clothes swamp him around the middle but fit just right in length. In comparison to J, E feels tiny still, even though he now weighs around a respectable 11 pounds. We've also seen some ghost smiles in reaction to our antics, though generally he's a very serious child still. I would be serious, too, I suppose, if I felt this cruddy. Wait, I do! So we're quite the pair, baby E and I, a pair of tired, sick folks who can barely breathe!

1 comment:

Lauren said...

Advocate aggressively on the reflux meds - we ended up seeing a specialist who put G on Prevacid. (Also, coughing is a symptom of reflux, so that could be making whatever cold/flu thing he has worse.) Hang in there! Hugs to all