Acid Reflux

Life comes at you fast - and so does projectile spit up when it hits a record 4 feet. Although her spit-up has always been legendary, last Thursday, Addie Jean gave us quite a scare. About 30 min after she finished a "feed," she doused mommy with 5 back to back 4 feet projectile vomits and officially empited out all the contents of her stomach. Since we were already worried about her spit ups, we immediately took her to the doctor to see what was wrong with our little peanut. First things first, it appears that altough she empties the contents of her stomach quite often - she is still getting something of value in there. As of Thursday (her five week old birthday) she was 10 lbs, 9oz of love. That means that she has gained 3 whole pounds since she was born. I guess the feedings that occur every 2 hours were happening for a reason. After explaining to the doctor that our little girl has a great new talent of throwing her spit up record lengths and that she wimpers after an episode like it is hurting her, the doctor let us know that our little one has acid reflux. Although it is good to know what she has, there is not so good news as to how to "fix" it. The doctor recommended that we try putting her at an angle when she sleeps, not laying her flat for 30 min after she eats, giving her adult Maalox to help coat her throat, and worst case give her baby Zantac twice a day to help manage it. However, she also let us know that none of these remedies will alleviate the problem or the pain or the spit up. Huh. We know that this is not the worst problem that our child could have - but no parent really wants any problem...and what is worse, is that she handles it pretty well most of the time. I know that doesn't sound bad - but what makes it bad is when she really does scream because of the pain - then we know that it is really, really hurting her. It sucks. We can handle getting all of our t-shirts doused on an hourly basis and changing her sleeper 3-4 times a night, but the hardest part is hearing her grunt and seeing her little face wrinkle in pain...we knew that parenting would be hard, but not being able to fix this for our little one is the hardest thing ever.