I think it is safe to say this has been the hardest but best three months of our lives. Who would have thought these two little babies would shake things up so much?!? Dave and I have been running on pure exhaustion and basically just doing everything we can to survive and get through this. Every now and then we will get a smile or giggle that makes every bit worth it! I have been tabbing things on the blog to go back and update because I have not had the time to keep up with it. I keep telling myself that eventually things will get back to normal...but I am not really sure what that "normal" will be with three kids!
We were very blessed to have family around for the first six weeks to help out..thank you grandma and grammy, I don't know if I could have done it without y'all. Then I was on my own, but we quickly realized that we needed to get more help on board. We have a night nanny that comes once a week, and then during the day on Thursdays to give me some time with David. I hired a recent college graduate to come twice a week to spend time with David and take him to some play group activities. My closest friend here has been amazing; she has helped get David out of the house once a week to see friends and even took full responsibility for car pool during the kids week long summer camp- thank you Katie! Thanks to my friend Brianna, we were able to sneak away a few weeks ago to take David to see his first movie, Cars 2. He was very excited, but after the 45 minutes of previews he only made it through maybe half of the movie before we said it was time to go due inappropriate three year old movie theatre behavior. We are so grateful to have such wonderful caring people in our lives that have been willing to help out in one way or another. Thank you all for everything!
So it has been a rocky first couple of months. We have been feeding babies around the clock and when it takes 1-1 1/2 hrs to get both babies fed your days and nights go by very quickly. Both babies have been growing very well, but around 5 weeks when their intake increased they were diagnosed with reflux...BOTH of them. If you have never experienced this before I pray you never will. After feedings the screaming would start; Avery would just want to nurse and eat more to ease the pain while Cason would literally be inconsolable. We started the the reflux medicine trial and error road in which finally led to getting Avery's under control with two different medicines-one in which she takes 4x/day; Cason however continued to have problems. Our pediatrician eventually referred us to a GI specialist who we have been seeing and is now treating and managing his reflux moving forward. He is on prevacid twice a day, a probiotic once a day and we have switched him from 90% breast milk to Alimentum formula. We believe there may have been a milk sensitivity involved and I could not have the added stress of wondering if his pain was caused by something that I ate. I was hoping to keep one or two feedings where I would nurse him, but he struggled with the switch so much that I didn't want to make it any more difficult for him. I'm happy that I was able to get the bonding experience with him and that he had his mommy's milk for the first three months of his life...which is more than I ever thought I would do. Bless his little heart he has been through so much over the past month; I feel like it is something once a week-the pediatric doctors/nurses and pharmacists are starting to know me on a first name basis. I can say that it is definitely getting better, but not 100%. On top of the reflux he has a very sensitive gag reflex which causes him to occasionally choke..talk about scary. Because of this he has spent the last month sleeping in between Dave and I so that when it does occur we can sit him up quickly. So both babies are still in our room and we are hoping to move Cason out of the cosleeper and into a seperate bassinet within the next few days. The doctors do not know if it is the reflux causing the gagging/choking or if it is related to his occasional congestion which could be allergies or reflux...trying to find the answers has been exhausting. The GI specialist suggested that we probe him for 24 hours and monitor his reflux to see if it is the culprit, but Dave and I feel like this might be an unnecessary painful step that will lead us to trying more medications that have failed us already. We are still weighing the pros and cons at this point.
As difficult as these past few months have been at the end of the day we have three healthy, amazing children. No one ever said it was going to be easy...
