Last week (Wednesday) I made a call to the pediatrician's office to see what our options were for resolving this ongoing battle. After talking through all of Reed's behaviors with the nurse, she said that Reed may either have a milk allergy or have difficulty digesting the milk protein. Trying soy formula would be a good option. So we gave that a whirl for 4 days, and that resulted in the same crabby Reed, except we then had a constipated crabby Reed. Yesterday morning I called the doctor's office again to find out "what now?" and we were scheduled for an appointment yesterday afternoon. After talking with Dr. Hunter about what's been going on, and after she examined him, she is thinking that Reed's troubles are caused by a digestion problem. Plan A is to switch him to yet another formula, and she also gave him a prescription for a one-dose med to help with the constipation, which is most likely contributing to his uncomfortability (I'd say so!). If we see no changes in 3-4 days, we move on to Plan B, which is to be evaluated for reflux. Either way, we are hoping this will just be a temporary issue, as I've read that most babies outgrow the "aversion" to milk between 3 and 6 months of age.
So, we've been on this new formula now for 24 hours. I am hopeful, but I'm wondering if any optimism I have about positive changes in Reed is based on just that: hope. He seems to have had a better day today. He slept for longer periods of time during the day and had a few longer periods of quiet contentment. He even was happy enough to shine his first cheeky grin at me. :) We'll see what tomorrow brings.
The downside to this plan is that this new formula is about the most expensive I've seen on the shelves. The clinic sent us home with a small sample, and the nurse told me that they get samples fairly often so to ask for some whenever we come in. We'll be paying about 5 times as much as we did for the standard milk-based formula. Eeek! The plus-side is that if the formula works, we have our happy little baby back, and that is worth the investment!
a quiet moment
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