juthwara

Dear Fairies who took my mellow daughter and left a fussy dyspeptic changeling in her place,

I realize that the Fair Ones are attracted to human children, and really, I can't blame you. I mean, who could resist those chubby cheeks and grey eyes? But I really must protest. Sometime this weekend, you took my mellow child who fed well and slept easily and replaced her with a decidedly inferior changeling. Said changeling then proceeded to get up to all sorts of tricks, like spending hours over the weekend wailing with hunger while refusing to nurse. And last night's gastric fireworks - it clearly wasn't enough to dirty three diapers over the course of the same diaper change, but she had to both projectile spit up (all over her father) and produce such copious poo that the diaper couldn't hold it and leaked (again, all over her progressively grimier father). I would like to request a return of the old model, as the new one is decidedly too fussy and messy for my taste.

Sincerely,

Me

Dearest Kate Monster,

Incontinence was never meant to be an extreme sport. Your daddy is running out of clean clothes and we are perilously low on clean diapers. Do you think we're made of money? And while we're at it, waking up at 5am to nurse just so you can doze at the breast while taking an occasional lackadaisical suck is not the best use of my time or yours. Kindly keep this in mind in for the future.

Love,

Your Mother

Oy, what a weekend.

I ~~am beginning to suspect~~ seriously think that K is developing reflux. She started getting fussy while nursing on Saturday, where in the evening, she nursed for a while, got progressively fussier, and eventually started a pattern of nurse - pull away and cry - nurse - pull away and cry, until I decided that even if she wasn't on a nursing strike, I was, and gave her to her father to finish the feeding with a bottle.

I didn't think much about it until the next day, when a five-hour nursing session ended the same way, and then repeated itself that night and the next morning, until we were both in tears every time a feeding came. Since she successfully finished each feeding with a bottle, my first panicked thought was nipple confusion, that she had decided that eating from a bottle was easier and she didn't want to breastfeed any more.

But then she successfully nursed several sessions in a row. And it just didn't seem to fit - when she cried, it seemed a lot more like pain and hunger than frustration. And the fact that she would often nurse happily made it seem like a remarkably random sort of confusion. And a little research began to suggest that that pattern of eating was an indicator of acid reflux, where the baby wants to eat but pulls away because excess acid makes eating hurt. Paying closer attention, I discovered that refusal to nurse was always preceded by her pulling away and spitting up, then going back to nursing but getting progressively more agitated until the pulling away and crying would start. I also realized that she would successfully take a bottle (well, mostly - see last night's projectile spitup incident, which was after a bottle-feeding) after that point because with nursing, she was crying because she was both in pain and hungry. But she can get the same amount of food from a bottle in a fraction of the time, so she was able to sate her hunger with a bottle before the pain made her unwilling to eat.

Reflux has always been at the back of my mind in any case - this isn't just your overanxious parent Internet diagnosis. I've wondered if she would develop it ever since the first time she choked while she was eating exactly in the way my mother, brother, grandmother and I all do/did. Not coincidentally, we all choke that way because of reflux. Sigh. There were many things I would have wished for K to inherit from her great-grandmother - her financial acumen, her organization, her giving nature. But I was really hoping reflux would be left off the list.

Thankfully, we had a pediatrician appointment tomorrow anyway for her one-month checkup. Hopefully, we'll be able to get some relief for all of us, since I'm not sure how much longer I can keep up what I'm doing right now. I start out nursing her, which takes forever, I suspect because she periodically wants to stop eating until the reflux dies down. Ideally, we finish the feeding that way, but if it gets bad enough, I switch to the bottle. Then I pump like a fiend so a), my supply doesn't drop and b), my chest doesn't explode. Meanwhile, she's fussy and doesn't nap very long because she's in pain. It's not every feeding and she's still getting some good naps, thank goodness, but it's often enough to be really wearing.