Feeding Evaluation

You know you have a large family when...

...your children feel sorry for families with only six or seven children.
...people ask if you're competing with the Duggars.
...even your friends aren't sure how many children you have.
...your family no longer fits in a 15 passenger van.
..complete strangers feel welcome to comment on your fertility and contraceptive methods.
...two of your daughters go for a walk...and get asked by a neighbor if they're foster kids.
...you have to carry three health insurance cards in your wallet- because that's how many it takes to fit everyone's name.
...you take the wrong child to the dentist...simply because your handwriting on the calendar was messy and both started with a "j".
...grocery shopping for 30 children and 12 adults for a two day camp constitutes a "small" shopping trip for you.
You find yourself relating some small incident to your husband and starting with the words, "Well, I only boiled twenty-six eggs for breakfast..."
...you buy a 40 pound box of bananas intending to make banana bread and freeze a bunch for smoothies...but your children eat them all first.
...you find an afternoon root canal relaxing.
...it takes you twenty-three minutes on the phone to schedule your children's dental appointments.
...you've given up on using your toaster entirely and make all of your toast under the broiler in you oven.
...you are seriously tempted by the stacking cribs you see at Goodwill for $19.99.
...you find yourself thinking, "Wow, the house is so quiet and peaceful with only nine children".
...you have enough children to constitute not one, but TWO large families.
...you have a laundry basket devoted entirely to lonely socks seeking their mate.
...when you got to buy your children those cool "spin toothbrushes" because you think they get their teeth so much cleaner...but the store doesn't carry enough styles/colors for your children to each have a different toothbrush.
...when you can't take all of your children to the doctor's office at the same time because the waiting room has only 10 seats.
...when you still have seven children that are required by law to sit in a carseat or booster seat.
...you call the doctor to get your children tetnus shots, and they tell you they don't have enough in the office and need to order more from the health department.
...you take up more than one entire pew in church.
...you take only half of your children to the library, and STILL get asked if they're all yours.
...you go to fill your children's flouride prescription at the phamacy and you clean them out of every pill they have...and it's still not enough.
...you spend sixty dollars on socks...and not everyone gets new socks.
...you go shopping at Costco and the cashier asks if you're having a soccer barbecue.

September 28, 2011

Do you have any idea wha this humble stack of clothing represents? My boy is finally, finally growing. Apollo at 15 months is now up to a very respectable 19 pounds. It appears that his high fat diet is working. He has finally begun to outgrow the clothing that I bought him when he was six months old. I have photos of him wearing the clothes he's just outgrown in January. Yes, nine months ago. Everything he has outgrown has been in length (in fact his pants still literally fall off if he isn't in a cloth diaper) but he is growing! So to celebrate I had a little online shopping spree. After 15 months of struggling to feed my baby, I thought it was well justified. Chuck was just happy we actually had to buy him new clothes.

Yesterday's appointment went well. He sat at a little table and let me spoon applesauce into his mouth. An unheard of event at our house. While it would have been nice in a way for him to display his more typical behavior of screaming bloody murder and acting like he was being tortured, the reality is he's getting better.

Apollo at Seattle Children's Hospital

I won't go into all the details, but I left with some helpful suggestions. The theory at this point is that his esophogus was so badly damaged from ten months of untreated reflux (we know there was damage- it was visible when the ENT stuck the scope down his throat) that he learned early on that eating=pain. So he only ate and nursed enough to stay alive. Now our job is to teach him that eating is safe.

My heart breaks to think about all the suffering this little guy has gone through. I had no idea he had reflux. Several of you blog readers mentioned it early on, but he never spit up and he hated his carseat (most reflux babies like to sit upright- it reduces reflux and pain). I think of all the days he spent crying in pain because he can't tolerate dairy (even before solids when he was exclusively breastfed) and in pain because of the reflux. The nights he spent awake, crying and coughing.

I'll tell you what though, I am so very thankful that I followed my gut and didn't tow the hardline, being a "good parent" and making him cry it out. Imagine if we left him to cry in his crib night after night when he was hungry and in pain (and we didn't know it) so he would "learn to sleep" ? Instead I nursed him, walked with him, comforted him and let him know he wasn't alone. And now that he isn't constantly hungry and in pain, he's sleeping.

Don't get me wrong, most of our babies have gotten to the point where we knew they were simply in the "habit" of waking up at night. They were growing and doing well and we needed to teach them that I was not, in fact, Mom's All Night Diner. So we spent a few nights having them "cry it out". This consisted of us checking to make sure they weren't wet, poopy, sick, etc, then laying them back down to go to sleep on their own. But with Apollo, I knew something was "off". And it's been worth 15 months of a lack of sleep to know I am doing the right thing for my baby.

That reminds me, the OC at the appointment yesterday repeatedly said to me, "I know you probably don't have time for this or that" or "You're busy, so you probably can't do this..." in reference to our large family until I finally said, "I have time to do whatever I need to keep Apollo healthy". And I do.

The other amusing comment was when the OC said, "Well, other than being underweight he seems to have been really heathly...well, except for the RSV and pneumonia and reflux..." to which I added, "and repeated ear and respiratory infections". Yes, other than all that (and his prolapsed cord and frenulectomy) I'd say he's been fit as a fiddle!

{Thank you, thank you, thank you, to all of you who have been voting for me. I know it's a pain. I'm getting tired of it myself. I've been in the lead and maintained it yesterday...things are so very close though and will be until literally the last vote. Only six more days of voting!}

06:42 AM in Baby 2010 | Permalink