I had a little breakdown last night. Andrew is not eating well and it is a battle everytime. He does ok for about an ounce and then he fights it. He cries, he pulls away, he turns his head, sometimes screams. I don't get it. I hate it. The low end of his goal for feeds is 750 ml. Saturday he had 504ml, Sunday was at 576ml, Monday was 662ml. He is so far from goal. We were just at the cardiologist for an echo so I'm confident it isn't his heart but how is he supposed to grow? I don't want him to start losing weight.
Part of this is missing out on the night time feed. When we were at the cardiologist we received conflicting information. He said we should be waking him at night to feed him. He also said we shouldn't have to fortify the breastmilk to 24 calories anymore. This is not what we have been told by the pediatrician. She said to not let him go more then 4 hours between feedings and to keep fortifying. I think he still needs that extra feed over night. And if we were to discontinue fortifying it would make his goal even higher! How long do you continue to wake a baby at night to feed them? I don't want to be waking up a two year old and making them eat a sandwich at 2am. Is this going to contribute to sleeping problems for him?
I'm wondering if maybe he has reflux. From the little bit I've read on the internet (good ole' Google!) it seems like it could be a very good possibility. Wanting to sit up while drinking his bottle, crying during, pulling away from the bottle, taking a drink, and then crying again. He sounds hoarse now while crying during feeding. I hate it!
We go to the pediatrician tomorrow for his 6 month well baby visit. I am looking forward to the appointment to see what she says but am also scared that the scale is going to show minimal weight gain or even a loss. Hopefully she will let us try some reflux medicine for at least a couple weeks to see if that helps. I am not looking forward to the shots! We also go to the occupational therapist tomorrow. She is such a nice lady, I'm looking forward to seeing her. She'll be happy with Andrew's progress developmental. I think he is right on track in that department. Maybe she'll have some bottle advice for me too. AND since we'll be at St. Mary's maybe we'll stop in the CICU to say hi. Love those nurses!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I know, it's sooo frustrating isn't it? We had similar problems. I will say that even when we weren't making our feeding goals, she still hung in there and at least never lost weight. A lot of what you describe we had (not eating much, pulling away, crying, etc.) We had a bunch of tests (for relux, swallowing, digestion) all of which were normal. It finally went away when we got off all the Portagen, fortifiers, and certain meds (Potassium comes to mind! No matter how we gave it, it made life difficult!) We were on some stomach meds, like Zantac, but they didn't seem to help her. Looking at how she did off all that stuff, we know her body just didn't like anything but straight breast milk. It took a couple weeks (3?) off all fortifying for her body to catch up and start to eat more. If you decide to stop fortifying, give him a couple weeks to regulate, it won't happen overnight. But if it were me, I'd sure ask for some reflux meds as it's worth trying, and if they don't help ask if they can do some further testing.
ReplyDelete