Poo Holding and Potty Training

You know, it's been so long since I've written a post for this blog, I wasn't entirely sure I'd be able to access it! But, here we are. After two years of not broadcasting how we've worked through growing pains with our little one, why bother resurrecting this blog now? Glad you asked. Poo holding and potty training.

It's a reasonable assumption that if you've found your way here, you've probably read, oh, ten or twelve other blogs or boards in relation to potty training issues. If you haven't started training yet, let me make one thing abundantly clear: Do not let pretentious parents inadvertently shame you into training too early. "Mmm, my Cocoa was potty trained at thirteen months." Well, isn't that just f*ing precious. That's all well and good, and I hope she delights in reading Tolstoy whilst dropping her plops in the porcelain seat of honor but guess what? It's not the standard. I cannot stress enough the importance of waiting until YOUR CHILD is ready for potty training. Why am I so bent on that? Oh, four months of personal hell might have something to do with it.

Just after our little girl turned two, I got on the potty training wagon. Mind you, two really doesn't seem too early for potty training, however, it was too early for our girl. We were just too determined to let a little something like her lack of readiness get in the way. And so, even more determined than her parents, our little girl decided, "All right, yeah, that's cool. I'm uh... just not going to poop ever again." And she came pretty close.

It all started in June. Or I guess I should say, it all stopped. Our daughter started holding in her poops. Until your child starts to do this on a regular basis, you really can't appreciate the intense level of stress and anguish it causes both parent and child. It didn't take long for me to decide to stop even having her go pee on the potty (which she could do when put there but a) Didn't understand when the function was about to occur and b) Wasn't even all that sharp about being able to pull up and down her pants.) Even after we stopped putting her on the potty, the damage was done. We'd been so insistent about the pooping, she held it too long and it hurt when she went and the pain of that was something she was not willing to forget. She was actively choosing not to go.

When she would actively hold in her bowel movements, you would think she was auditioning for The Exorcist. She would instantly drop to the floor, squirm around and cry. At times, she would scream hysterically, become sweaty, and shout all sorts of things. Understand also, that this was a child who had fantastic language skills and comprehension. But no amount of logic or reasoning on our part could convince her that it was okay to poop. 'Everybody Poops'? Our kid's response? Not on my watch. 'It Hurts When I Poop'- many parents' saving grace when mired in this hell... ineffective. Bribery was attempted with very little success. At this point, we didn't even ask her to go on the toilet. We were pretty much begging her to go in a diaper. Hell, at the peak of this, she could have done it on grandma's wedding quilt and that would have been okay.

On average, she'd hold it for 4-5 days. When she did go, it was traumatic. Even when her stool wasn't all that hard. In fact, even when her stool was the consistency of pudding, she'd still be a mess. The longest she went without pooping was nine days. NINE. DAYS. And every time she held it longer than two days, she would get progressively crazier. This was not our funny, smart little girl anymore. In addition to all the behavior changes, her stomach became distended and was often rock hard. Summer of fun with my adventurous two year old? Not even close.

So, what did the doctors do? Well, they weren't terribly concerned (which as you can imagine was very frustrating). She was put on Miralax which is only a stool softener, not a laxative. In the very long run, this was helpful but I'm talking months down the line. We tried a suppository once. Once was enough. The execution was a failure on my part and opting not to traumatize her further, we never did it again. The doctor (understandably) didn't want to perform an enema and we were quite on board with that. This all started with a painful poop, shoving more things up her little buns wasn't going to do us any favors.

The Combinations That Led to Healing:

• Miralax (the highest dose we could go)
• Magnesium Citrate (sparingly)
• Tons of prune juice
• No dairy
• Lots of water
• No processed foods
• Minimal carbs
• The right fruits and veggies
• Exercise
• Mystical Parenting Mojo

Okay, so Magnesium Citrate... nectar of the gods. It eliminates the option of whether or not to go. Takes a few hours to work but flushed her out pretty good. We tended to see an improvement after each use. All told, over four months I think we only resorted to this three times and only when it was dire. The important thing was: she had to re-learn how to poop on her own. She couldn't become too dependent on medicine to make her go. 

Change in diet was helpful to make the stool softer and encourage regulaity. It also helped that for some beguiling reason, she loves prune juice. We used to mix it with water and white grape but man, she would down that stuff straight. 

Exercise. Over the summer, it got to the point where my child would only poop at the playground. Seriously. If I wanted to kinda trick her into pooping, I'd take her to the playground, let her run around. It got things moving and in the beginning, she'd panic, plant herself on the ground, wiggle around and sometimes, refuse to go. Other times, she would bear down like she had all the might of Thor and fill her diaper. I even had to switch up which playgrounds I took her to. Believe me, as I drove to one of many parks last summer I thought, "Jesus, what am I going to do come winter???" 

Mystical Parenting Mojo? What on earth is this? Well, this was a complicated issue and we'll get to that. We made an appointment for a G.I. specialist, then suddenly, she started going every couple of days. Marvelous! We cancelled the appointment and cut back on the Miralax. Big mistake. She didn't necessarily go back to square one, but she started holding for 4-5 days again. So, I rescheduled the appointment, we upped the Miralax and kept with everything we were doing. About a month later, she started to improve again and would even go and triumphantly exclaim, "I made poops!! And it didn't even hurt!!" But I kept the appointment anyway. The G.I. specialist was amazing. He showed me diagrams of the digestive tract, explained how everything functions (beyond just your standard high school health lesson). He shared information about this particular problem, what sparks it, what helps it. He gave our girl her check-up, and after listening to me, this is what he relayed: 

• As we suspected, her problem was not physical. It was psychological. She was just afraid to poop.
• "Keep doing exactly what you're doing."
• "Little ones don't understand that we get what is going on. They think they're alone in this. Let her know you know what is happening and how she feels and that will help her be less afraid." 
• "She may backslide a little bit again, but just keep everything up and keep calm. That's important. 
• "Once she's had a somewhat hard poop and realizes it's okay, you can start cutting back on the Miralax." 

It was a great relief to have a specialist assess her and to know that she would be okay. My husband and I couldn't understand how our sometimes ridiculously smart girl couldn't figure out that it wouldn't hurt anymore. The doctor told me that this poop holding nightmare is often done by kids who are pretty smart, so it wasn't a matter of her being a few watts short. (Mind you, she's not reading Tolstoy on the crapper like Cocoa but...)

Let's get back to that mojo. The biggest part of that was not freaking out when she freaked out. If that sounds like common sense, that's because it is. However, when you've been obsessing and languishing in the throes of a toddler poo strike, common sense is a faraway memory... one you're pretty sure you actually forget. Every status update was pretty much poop or no poop. Most greetings were followed up by a wince and the question," So... how's the little one?" Those who were astute could tell right off, if I could focus and I was smiling, she'd pooped in the last 24 hours. This brand of toddler problem sucks the brains right out of you. Both my husband and I were nearly as crazed as our daughter by summer's end. I almost mind telling you, the stress visibly aged me and by the end of summer I was suffering from depression. We were powerless to help her, at least in our eyes. That takes a toll on your heart and mind. We just wanted her to be okay.

Holding poop is not the worst thing a kid can go through. My husband and I said on many occasions that our little family could have it a lot worse. But when you're watching your kid writhe on the floor, scream and cry in pain, struggle to concentrate, and get hysterical over nothing, it kills you. So if you're going through this, or you know someone who is, first and foremost, I understand your plight and I'm sorry. I also want to say, there will be a light at the end of the tunnel. That light will however, be a train at least two or three times. But after getting run down by a few locomotives, yes, you'll work through this problem with your little one. 

Gradually, our girl became more confident in her pooping. She poops every day now. She'll even poop on command. She's proud of her ability to go poop and we're praising the good Lord that she's so regular. She still gets the smallest bit of Miralax (we gradually reduced), still drinks prune juice regularly. We don't do a lot of dairy, still try to avoid anything processed (although, I'm gonna be honest with you, sometimes some Chick-fil-a waffle fries do the trick for grease'n her up). 

In a couple months, she'll be three. As such, I thought we should give potty training another try. We'd gone back to peeing on the potty and now she was capable of pulling up and down her pants, wiping, understood the process. So, I opted to do the 3 day intensive training. (Pee only and there was no way I was trashing diapers and Pull-Ups on our budget). On day 2, I pretty much wanted to give up. In the morning on day 3, my husband was on duty while I went to a meeting and when I came home, she'd apparently gone to the potty unprompted twice. He just walked into the bathroom and she was finishing up. It was starting to click. She didn't have any accidents that day. When she needed to poop, she told me and I put her in a Pull-Up and she went to her favorite spot to go. And this, folks, I will happily permit her to do until she's old enough to drive. She's getting the pee process, announcing when she has to go and going to the bathroom on her own. We're still doing the bottomless thing around the house (though I doubt we'll keep that up for three months) and it's promising to see that she's capable of understanding the need to go and then carrying out the task appropriately. As far as pooping goes, I'd say I learned my damn lesson the first time. We'll work on that gradually. She has gone on the toilet, but I'm not pushing it. That hurdle will be jumped when she's good and ready. 

Best of luck to anyone going through this. Sympathize with your kid, flush 'em with poo softening liquids, keep them moving, and try the impossible: keep your cool!

Sleepy Time Blues!

This was an issue I had to wait on before blogging. Then things around here got so busy with "Bug" crawling all over the place that I plain didn't have the time! Of all of our baby bumps in the road, this one was hands down our hardest. There were two playing fields here. Bedtime and naptime. You'd think bedtime would have been the harder of the two, but for us it wasn't. Here's what wound up working for our family:

Bedtime

For us, bedtime was so haphazard. When Bug was a teeny tiny, she was often up late with her Daddy, watching basketball. For both bedtime and naptime she just kinda slept when she slept. We read posts on boards, websites, blogs, and books and by the time she was about 4 months old we finally figured out a bedtime routine. We came up with a few signals and stuck to them in order- religiously. In addition to that, we opted for the "controlled crying it out" method. True to the book crying it out just wasn't for our girl. She'd scream bloody murder, turn red, hyperventilate. Call us softies but we just didn't see any psychological benefit to terrorizing our child. She's gotta learn to cope but I don't think getting worked up into a vomiting session is necessary for that.

So we did the whole 5, 10, 15 type deal where you let them cry and then after a while go in and shush/pat without picking them up and then gradually increase the time between going in.  If it "got too far" and she was screaming, one of us would go in. There was a difference between her "NEED YOU" cry and her "Hey, I'd really prefer it if you'd come in here and love me" cry. The longest I think we let her go was half an hour or so (for bedtime... naptime is a whole different nightmare). If you Google controlled crying it out, you'll find a whole play by play for it. It worked for us, so hopefully you'll find success with it too. 

In addition to controlled crying it out, as I said we added a cozy routine. For her comfort (especially in the beginning) I made her a very soft and cuddly lovey which I wore under my shirt for an entire evening before giving to her so it would smell like Mama and help her feel more secure once we put her in her crib.

Our Bedtime Routine:

• Begin "wind down" (VERY important) TV off, lights dimmed, no excitable activity. This was about twenty minutes before actual bedtime. 
• Pajamas and overnight diaper
• Say goodnight to things around the house (na-night trees, na-night pictures...)
• Into Mommy and Daddy's bed for two stories (tucked in with Mama and her lovey). We'd read 'Goodnight Moon' and 'Bears in the Night'. Daddy would do the reading.
• After bedtime stories, Daddy would take the Doodle Bug. All lights would go out (a little weird, but it sends a very distinct message) and he would take her to her room, close the door and feed her her bottle. Once she finished her bottle, he'd give her a little goodnight speech, put her in her crib with lovey and leave. 

It took maybe a week or two before everything took full effect and Bug understood, 'Okay, this is bedtime and now I go to sleep.' So there is a happy medium between crying it out and just banging your head against the wall. These strategies worked really well for us. Babies crave consistency!

Stick to it, keep strong. Remember, "It won't be like this for long." Now we put our daughter down for the night and we can relax in bed, watch TV, read, talk... it's a little more like "normal" which goes a long way to keeping you sane! 

Nap Time... My Own Personal Hell

Nap time was a tougher battle. It was a battle Mama had to fight alone. 

Bug was a notorious "cat napper". Anyone who has ever been there can tell you, a baby who will only nap for 30 minutes max has the power to make you absolutely lose your mind. And I did. Repeatedly. Pitifully. Daily. She would wail, and rail and pitch a fit. This went on from about 3 or 4 months until about 6 months. During nap time there was a lot more crying it out, a lot more screaming. I tried to make her room as dark as I could, tried to establish a similar daytime routine for pre-nap. 

Ultimately what I think it came down to for Bug was getting a fuller belly. She was breastfed and just not getting enough. My production must have been pretty high octane in the beginning but eventually, it just was not enough for her. 
There were days (many of them) where I was either in complete shambles on the floor, or hiding in the bathroom with the fan on, video baby monitor and cell phone in hand. The wailing was unbearable but I knew she had to nap. During the day, crying it out could go as long as 45 minutes. There was a lot of praying, crying and cursing. 
What ultimately worked (I believe) were a couple of things:

1. She was able to sit up on her own and therefore instead of feeling abandoned and helpless, she began to sit up and just play with toys until becoming so drowsy she'd lay down and sleep. (But even this wasn't the case all the time).

2. Controlled crying at night helped her learn how to put herself to sleep. 
3. We not longer rocked her to sleep or allowed her to fall asleep nursing or at the bottle. She had to learn to do it on her own. 
4. Fuller belly. I hate to say this, but it came at the hands of formula feeds. That's an issue for another post though. By now she was eating solids for lunch and dinner and previously, I'd top it off with some boobie but boobie just wasn't cutting it. Once I switched to the formula, she started taking real naps. 

Granted, Bug is not the greatest baby sleeper of all time. It took her until she was nearly 8 months old to consistently sleep through the night. Every baby has their pace and it's our job to do the best we can to help foster healthy habits. For our family, it was a solid and cozy routine and consistency. Oh, and prayer. Plenty of prayer. 

Baby VS Car Seat

Wait, I thought all babies LOVED car seats. Why is she screaming!?

At first, the car seat was fine. We'd put her in, get where we needed to go, simple as that. However, as Bug got older, suddenly a five minute trip in the car became a wheel gripping nightmare! After a minute in the car seat she would start screaming bloody murder. It was pure torture. Everyone else's kid passes out in the car and sleeps peacefully. Why is mine flipping shit?

We checked to make sure the belts weren't too tight and that there wasn't anything in the seat poking at her. All good. There didn't appear to be any physical rationale for why she was freaking out. I started to notice that she was actively trying to get the buckle in her mouth. And when she couldn't- all hell would break loose. So... I started making sure she had a full belly before getting in the car and I began looping a burp cloth over the buckle so at least she could stuff that in her mouth instead. (Bug was around 2 months when this nonsense started).

These two things worked about 50% of the time, but we were still having trouble. My husband and I practically has PTSD when it came to getting in the car with her! The next solution was one of my husband's finding. (Again, sometimes Google is good for something!) Someone recommended soothing music to help calm the baby while she's in the car. He picked up a Disney Lullaby CD at his library. It was perfect. It really made a difference in our car rides. (In fact, I found that ever since then singing Baby Mine is very soothing for her). 

The #1 fix for the car seat drama? A new car seat. Bug was still in her infant carrier which was supposed to be good up to 25 pounds. Well, she wasn't anywhere near 25 pounds but she was very tall (95th percentile) and along with that... kinda weighty. She wasn't a total porker, but toting that infant carrier was becoming a chore. My husband read on a discussion board that going from the infant carrier to the convertible car seat (even though it was a little soon) helped so we headed out and bought what my dad refers to as "The Cadillac of car seats"

Sure enough, it was the final piece to our car seat solution. This car seat was SO much more comfortable than her infant carrier, it was roomy, plush and attractive. Since trading up, we haven't had a car seat melt down since. Sure, she'll still get a little fussy here and there if she's having a cranky day but there's no crying!

Oh Boobie Milk, Wherefore Art Thou, Boobie Milk?

Before having Bug I never imagined I'd have a problem keeping the ole milk truck pumping. Low milk supply? How can any woman have a low milk supply? Well, shit happens. Here's how it seems to have happened for me...

I wasn't eating enough, drinking enough, or sleeping enough and I was extremely stressed out. I half thought my husband was going to have to have me sent to the booby hatch! Although, he might have joined me. As a result, my milk supply tanked and I didn't even realize it. All I knew was now Bug was screaming like crazy if I dared put her down after what I thought was a marathon feed. Can't put baby down... can't eat! Can't eat... get crazy... both of those contribute to "Milk Truck" (our nickname for me) running dry. A horrid cycle."

This problem occurred early on- before she was a month old. At one of her early well checks the nurse practitioner said, "The baby looks great- you look like hell!" She suggested we supplement some feedings with formula. I was reluctant, thinking I was failing her as a mother. I had my heart set on exclusively breastfeeding. Breast is best!!! Breast is best!!!

Let me tell you something. Breast may be best, but "crazy lunatic bitch" doesn't help ANYBODY, least of all- the baby. So started to supplement with a *little* bit of formula. We had to mix it with pumped breast milk. This gave my hooters a break and my body a chance to catch back up. I also had to force myself to eat more. With the supplementing, it also allowed my husband to do one feeding a night.

Finding the right formula was also a nightmare. For one, babies hate the taste of formula. Secondly, one of Bug's doctors erroneously thought she was allergic to dairy (which made the possibility of a dairy based formula problematic). Ultimately, we went with Similac Advance. To start we had to mix with breast milk and my husband had to be the one to give it to her as she wouldn't take it from me!

A word of caution on supplementing though- if you want to keep that boobie milk flowing, don't allow yourself to slide into supplementing with breast milk instead of the formula! This became an issue with us much later, after my supply rebounded. It was just easier to give her formula once she would take it when we were out in public- or during the night. (Husband started to take over all the night feeds). The more formula you give, the less milk you're going to produce. So just be careful. We're at 6 months and one week and I'm clinging to the last few drops of breast milk and I'm down to producing it from only one boob!!

Here are a few things I did to help bolster the supply:

• Almond Milk. For some reason, it really helped with the supply. I took it in my cereal and had on average, three bowls of cereal a day. I would notice a significant drop if I went a day without it. Yes, it's pricey but it's worth every penny. 
• Eat More. Try to make them worthy calories. This was tough for me because I was thrilled to finally lose weight.
• Oatmeal- They say to make sure it's the "good stuff" not the packaged oatmeal. I found both styles worked well but I'd often mix the two. 
• Hydrate!
• Relax. Ha! I've got all this going on and you tell me to relax!!? I know. But try. 
• Offer the breast often. Like I said, don't become too reliant on formula or solids. 

Hopefully this helps. Stay tuned for the post on nursing strikes!!

"I Can't Put Her Down!"

"For Christ's sake, I just want to pee!"

It didn't take very long for our cherub to let me know she wanted to be held... constantly. If I put her down, she'd cry. As soon as I picked her up- fine. (And no... it wasn't an ear infection... yet.) When I told the nurse practitioner she pronounced- colic. Colic. Really? Are you shitting me? 

Now, this may not sound like a problem to some of you. Who wouldn't want to hold their sweet little newborn all the time? And now that I'm out of that particular phase, sure, I might be able to see that as well. But I was a stay at home mom with little to no help during the day (husband worked, mama in law not in close proximity, no siblings nearby, friends all worked). Her crying cut right through me so rather than let her cry for a few minutes (oh, that was just unspeakable in my book at the time) I actually had to resort to holding her while I went pee! It was bad. I had quite a few breakdowns. My mother-in-law said my husband was like that. Gee. Thanks hubby. She got your dark hair and your inability to go without being cuddled 24/7. My mother-in-law chuckled as she recounted vacuuming while holding him. I wanted to bang my head against the wall. All I saw ahead of me was months and months and months of never, ever being able to set her down for anything. 

It was colic in the sense that if I put her down, she cried. It was not colic in the sense that she would scream and cry for hours on end no matter what I did. That much, I can be thankful for. So how did I cope?

• I listened to It Won't Be Like This For Long by Darius Rucker and You're Gonna Miss This by Trace Atkins (the first song still makes my husband cry). 
• I got real familiar with our Baby Bjorn. Mostly we went for walks but I also did things around the house with her strapped in. 
• Went for walks in the stroller
• Exercised while holding her (squats, lunges, dancing)
• Started "Opa pa Thursday"- my Dad came over every Thursday and she was so content being held she usually just napped on him for a couple of hours
• Baby Swing (worked on occasion) 
• Tummy time (after a while we were able to do this with her and it helped)
• Grab'n'Go snack basket- Stocked a basket with granola bars, cereal bars, fruit snacks for easy grazing
• Prepared my lunches ahead of time
• Rested/Ate when she napped

The exercise bit was great. After I got married I packed on the pounds and for the life of me, couldn't shed them. I had pretty much given up on the notion of ever fitting into anything skinny again. Well, combine breast feeding with a reflux diet and a colicky baby and you get the best damn weight loss plan ever. In less than four months I lost all the baby weight and all the marriage weight! I got down to my wedding day weight. Looking back, I should have been less restrictive with my diet or just forced myself to eat more because it definitely contributed to my milk supply drying up just a little faster than I planned. 

Colic will pass. Bug's colic phased ended before she was two months old.  Carrying her a lot did not spoil her. Although she thrives on attention, she's more than capable of being left "alone" to play. At nearly 6 months she still has "needy" days that remind me of the colic times but I just recognize them as what they are and even though it can be annoying "I'm right heeeere kid! Relax! You're fine! I'm just putting some dishes in the sink!" 

Everyone told me just to enjoy her wanting to be held because one day, she won't be able to get out of my arms fast enough. True enough. Most folks also told us, "My baby had colic and by 6 months he was just happy all the time!" This, I can also attest to. Even when she had colic, whenever she was around people they'd say, "This baby has colic?!" Well sure, I'm holding her. She's happier than a pig in shit. Like I said though, the colic passed and like the other doll babies that came before, our little girl was touted as "One of the happiest babies" people had ever seen. Unless she's fighting a nap- now that's a nightmare for another post but largely and for the most part Bug is an extremely happy baby, very content and super social once she determines you're not a threat!

Yes, colic is one of those things that makes you want to rip out your ovaries so you don't have another baby... but it will pass. Eventually. Then you can look back and say a bunch of self righteous shit to the poor folks currently muddling through it. 

Hey Honey, Did You See This?

It started with a few little red specs on her chest and chin when she was a couple weeks old. I thought it was baby acne, so I let it go for a couple days. Then it grew a little more dense, spread a little further. My husband I and questioned each other about it and weren't quite sure what to make of it. I was a bit hesitant to take her to the doctor, what with how often we'd been there in the three first weeks of her existence (well checks, frenulum, acid reflux...) It was a rash, this much was becoming pretty clear to us now that it was spreading all over her poor little pot bell and around to her back. But what was causing it??

We took her to the doctor to have it checked out. This time it was the female doctor in the practice. She noted the rash on Bug's chest, belly and back and said she believed it to be a dairy allergy. My heart sank. My child? Allergic to dairy??? Impossible. No way. There was just no biological way a fruit of my loins had a physical aversion to dairy. I drank pools of milk as a kid and kept true to it right up until the recent reflux debacle. Ice cream, cheese, yogurt. No. Just, no. But, since the doctor thought that's what it was, I decided I'd make an appointment with an allergist.

That, was a production. The office they referred me to couldn't see Bug for a whole month. "A month?!" I barked. "Are you kidding me!?" (Oh baby, hormones were still in full swing back then). It was completely unacceptable. My daughter was afflicted with a horrid rash that I was certain would scar her for life and no one could squeeze us in sooner? I grudgingly took the appointment, hung up, cried hysterically, then looked up my own damn allergist. It wasn't acceptable... therefore, I refused to accept it. This office could see Bug within literally a couple of days. Sold.

They tested Bug for an allergy to dairy. The test itself was absolute cake. Clearly before going, as I'm sure you can relate, I googled the shit out of "infant allergy test" to see what my poor pumpkin would be facing. For Bug, it was three little scratches. That's it. And you know what? She slept through the whole damn thing. Didn't stir at all. She was less than two months old at the time. Within 15 minutes the results were clear. Negative. My daughter did NOT have a dairy allergy.

Phew! To be honest, as long as she wasn't allergic to dairy- I suddenly felt okay about the rash. I asked the allergist (who was great by the way) what he thought the problem was. "What detergent do you use?" He asked. "Tide." I moronically retorted. "You should probably switch to Dreft." He didn't add, "You nincompoop." That was real swell of him.

Switch to Dreft we did (costly as it was) and voila! Goodbye rash! We washed everything in Dreft. Baby's clothes, our clothes, sheets, etc. We used Dreft right up until recently and Bug is nearly 6 months old now. We're finishing up our last bottle as we've started using All Free & Clear because it's HALF the price and so far is working just as well.

You've Gotta Be ReFLUXing kidding me.

Meal times when from "Oh thank GOD she latched!" To "Why is she arching her back like that and puking so much?" The telltale signs were there. Arching the back, copious and I do mean copious amounts of spitting up after eating, clawing at the chest, crying. My niece had acid reflux as an infant so in this case I knew pretty quickly what was wrong. I brought it up at Bug's two week well check and they weren't sold on the notion that she indeed had reflux. Balls to that. I was!

In another week or so I took Bug back to the doctor because I wasn't convinced. (Any parent will tell you- always trust your gut). This time we saw the doc and he concurred that it was very likely Baby Girl was suffering from acid reflux. Splendid. So what are our options? There were two different prescription routes to go and we went with Zantac. Giving her the doses was a chore. At first we mixed it in with some pumped breastmilk, but that wasn't always effective. Eventually, Bug just got accustomed to the taste and while she wasn't wild about it, she still took it but it often took singing, blowing in her face, and walking about between oral syringe squeezes to get the job done. (Uh... we made the mistake of trying to give her the whole 0.8mls in one shot. It promptly came right back out).

The Zantac alone wasn't enough to ease her reflux. I began looking into triggers for reflux and found certain foods were said to be linked to aggravating a baby's reflux. Some dispute this, I found it to be fairly accurate. There were so many things I stopped eating and as a result her reflux wasn't as bad AND that baby weight just melted off. You know, like that butter I couldn't have anymore. Oh yeah, I went balls to the wall. Cut out dairy, spices, herbs, red meat, anything fried. My mother-in-law asked, "Well, what can you eat?" I wryly replied, "Chicken and animal crackers."

That wasn't too far off the mark. I did substitute regular milk for almond milk because after a while I just HAD to have my cereal. The almond milk appeared to have a positive impact on my breast milk, bumping up production. You see- not having many food choices meant I wasn't eating as much, which meant the supply got low... there will be a post to follow on this hellish cycle!

We had to keep upping the dose as our little peanut grew into a little sack of potatoes. Gradually, I began reintroducing more food items and it didn't seem to upset her reflux. By the time Bug was three and a half months old we took her off the Zantac ourselves because we missed a bunch of doses down the shore on vacation and noted that she wasn't throwing up or arching her back. She's been off the Zantac ever since and hasn't had an issue with reflux.

Additionally- I went out and bought Bug the Fisher Price Rock'n'Play Sleeper so she wouldn't be flat on her back (laying flat tends to bother reflux babies). She slept in that for about four weeks or so. We noted a difference, plus it was just a good baby item to have. I could drag it into the bathroom, put her in it and grab a much needed shower while she was comfy and cozy and close by! We tried to feed her a little more upright, kept her upright for around 20 minutes after feeding. Baby Bjorn or a similar front carrier came in very handy for keeping her upright so she was more comfortable. We also tried to keep her feeds smaller with shorter time in between.

When bottles were involved: Dr. Brown's Bottles . They aren't hard to clean. I read that review somewhere. If you did too, disregard it. We put them in the dishwasher but even when we don't, they're not difficult. It's not a rubix cube.

*Important note about prescription medication for infant acid reflux: The medication had a tendency to make our daughter constipated. We found this was also the case with other reflux babies we knew. For our little girl- Mylicon worked wonders. After a little while she really didn't mind the taste at all. (Not the case with all babies). It's supposed to be very natural and Bug didn't have any reactions to it but as with all things we give our babies, keep an eye out for any adverse reactions. Mylicon became a daily part of her routine and I completely forgot about it until I looked in our medicine cabinet last night! If Mylicon doesn't work for your little one, I've also heard of using gripe water or prune juice. The last helping hand is a little weird but it worked for our girl- my husband would lay her on the changing table, hold her feet up with her knees bent and gently kept her little buns apart. He'd even grunt along with her as a showing of solidarity! After a minute or so this usually helped her poo.

Gas- The Mylicon helped with relieving gas but so did doing bicycle kicks with our little girl. My husband was the best at it. He'd lay her down, and bend her knees in a circular motion towards her chest and then away from her chest. This one is pretty standard for reflux babies!

We thought the acid reflux nightmare would last for months, even years. Everyone's story is different. Bug kicked it within 3 months- praise be! Ultimately, you experiment with what you're comfortable with and stick with what works. It's all a process and all for that darling little peanut!