Favorite Moments Friday

I really need a new name for this post.  One that reflects the purpose of the post as it is versus what I thought it would be.  I thought it would chronicle good or great moments that I would not want to forget.  Turns out that I want to remember all the moments, not just the good ones.  You see, I want to remember that this week S has begun to get his bottom two teeth and likes to suck on ice in the mesh food feeder and we went to the zoo for the first time (sure he slept through most of it and had more fun looking at the kids than the animals, but I had fun).  He also had his four month appointment and it went great!  He is meeting or exceeding all the milestones, he is gaining weight again (although he has dropped about 20 percentile points since 2 months due to the period he wasn't gaining weight fast enough).  While we were there S showed off some mad skills pushing himself up on his hands higher and for much longer than he has ever done at home.  And to top it all off, we were told that it was time to start rice cereal.  See this is the other part that I want to remember because rice cereal did not go well, but I want to remember the experience.  Here is what happened...

Rice cereal didn't just go badly, it was almost the death of me this week. But let me rewind first.  Tuesday night hubby and I introduced S to rice cereal and it went over pretty well.  He spit a lot of it out at first, but then he got the hang of it.  Eventually he decided he was done and so we went on with our normal bedtime routine.  Around 1am he woke up and was up for about 2 hours.  He was clearly uncomfortable so I massaged his belly and bicycled his legs and eventually he fell asleep.  I didn't really connect the discomfort with the rice cereal because it isn't completely abnormal for S to have some gas issues.  So the next night we decide to break out the high chair and we feed S rice cereal again.  This time he eats the whole prepared bowl (1 tablespoon rice cereal and 3.5 oz of breastmilk).  He seemed to really enjoy it and did a great job keeping it in.  Shortly after we put him down for bed though, the screaming began.  At first it seemed like he was just screaming with my husband.  I thought maybe S just needed to have his mommy and so I sat with him...and then the screaming started with me.  We were able to get him to calm down for bits here and there, but he cried a majority of the evening.  About 3-4 hours after it all began, hubby was tired, I was tired, and I knew that S was extra tired (you know with all the crying he was doing).  So I sent hubby to bed and S and I laid down on the bed in the guest room.  Ever so often he would start to cry again and we would cuddle or nurse, but that is how I spent the rest of the night.

So that morning (yesterday) I call the doctor and spoke with the advice nurse.  At this point we suspected that he was constipated so she told me to get some prune or apple juice to help "loosen" him up.  She also told me to try the BabyLax, although I wasn't sure we had reached that point yet.  At any rate, I gave him some apple juice in the afternoon and hoped that it worked.  So last night we decide to try the rice cereal again.  The nurse had said that it sometimes takes a few days for babies to get used to the cereal, but each night should get better.  HA!  Last night S had such terrible stomach pains that it caused him to scream out like I have never heard him scream.  We figured out if we put him high on our shoulder so his belly had lots of pressure on it, he seemed to feel better.  However, spending the entire night like that was not going to happen.  We debated giving him more apple juice but since we suspected that constipation was not really the issue, we decided against it.  Eventually I decided that maybe we could try gripe water...of course we didn't have any so hubby went off to the Walgreens (I had actually gone first but the one near our house had already closed).  While he was gone I nursed S and he seemed to calm a little bit.  Then we tried the gripe water...and I kid you not, 10 minutes later the kid was passed out on me and didn't wake again till 3:30am when he was hungry again.  I don't know if it was a coincidence or if it was the gripe water, but I was very, very grateful that the screaming had stopped.

So at this point hubby and I have no desire to keep trying the rice cereal.  I have put a call into the advice nurse again, but I don't know what they would tell me to change my mind.

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On a side note, I am heading out of town next week and will not be able to post.
I hope everyone has a fantastic week!

Mommy C