Savannah was born 6 weeks early. She was taken due to HELLP Syndrome. She was in the special care nursery for 4 days. So she did rather well. She did not have the suck reflex so I pumped and bottle fed her for the first 6 weeks. At three weeks she started to projectile her milk across the room. At first it was once a day and slowly it increase to on average 5-6 time a day. She cried all the time. Unless the vacuum was running. It was so hard to maintain a milk supply for her so my first upset was we had to supliment with formula. At 6 weeks she finally latch on. She nursed so well. But when I lifted her to burp her it all came back up. The doctors kept saying she was a colicy baby. I didn't accept this diagnosis because she cried if she was awake. By definition colic could not have been her problem. We went back and forth to the doc many times in a week. At four months we started her on cerial. If you even spooned one spoonful to many she would throw everything back up. So we struggled to figure out how much was to much. We couldn't go by, if she cried because she cried all the time weather she was full or not. Our marrage hit a rock and hard. We took her in for her 6 month well baby and found out that she had lost a pound and a half. Finally we had a red flag the doc would listen too. (this being the fourth doc we took her too). She was given an upper GI and it showed that she was refluxing even when she was swallowing. She was put on Zantac(foot note: why would anyone make a childs med that taste like mint is beyond me) then we waited and no improvement, she was put on pepcid we waited and no improvement, she was put on previcid we waited and no improvement, We finally put her on Prilosec and she would have week long intervuls of comfort. At this point she was on meds for gas, for constipation, for reflux, and for sleep.

By 9 months she stopped eating solid food. She had now assoiated food with pain
By 10 months I had to stop nursing her because it didn't contain enough caloried
By 10 1/2 months she was put into the hospital for more very invasive testing because she could not stomach any formula we tried and I had quickly stopped producing milk so I couldn't go back to nursing.
11 months started threapy for food oversions and delays in development were noted we also had to poke really big holes in the nipples of her bottles

We went back and forth to the doc and we would make a plan for a tube to be put in but then she would gain weight and give us a glimmer of hope so we would hold off. We went back and forth with the doc about the nissen wrap and dicided there were to many risks and she was having good periods

At 20 months she broke a tooth bad enough to need it capped. They put her to sleep for this. The periodotist decided to check out all the teeth and found that there were seven teeth that were broken and all of them had not enamal on the backs of them. She informed us that the reflux had done this damage and we should start brushing her teeth after she eats anything. Would have been nice if we were informed of this before her teeth came in. Now she is not allowed to eat anything hard, sticky or chewy.

She is three now and with a year and a half of OT she started to let us put food into her mouth. She still wont tell you if she is hungry, she doesn't know when she is. But she will eat table food now. That is if she doesn't choke on whatever she is eating. Then all bets are off because she mostlikely will throw up and she wont eat after that. If she doesn't throw up she will start cheeking her food until she chokes and ultimatley thows up. And don't even get me started if she catches the flu or a cold.

I don't mean to sound so negative. I am starting to head down this path with my son and I am not looking forward to it. But if I may say, Savannah has improved greatly. There is a light at the end of the tunnel now. And because of that there is a light at the end of the tunnel in these early stages with Connor.

Wow, you have been down a long road with Savannah. How old was she when they started the Prilosec and have they kept her on it all the time? The prilosec should have been helping to stop the dental enamel erosion if she's been on it the whole time. At least they are her baby teeth.

You must be so bummed to be dealing with all this again with Connor, at least you are more informed this time around and know better how to handle it. Hopefully his reflux will respond quickly and easily to meds!

She was some where around 10 months when she was put on prilosec but she was on and off of it because it would stop working. We didn't know much about reflux back then. If we knew then what we know now we would have never stopped giving it to her. We thought since the symptoms were back that the meds were not working. And back then we were not all that keen on giveing long term meds. Again we didn't know much about reflux back then.

Sorry it took me so long to respond to this. My e-mail never told me there was a post.

Sue

Savannah is now 4 1/2. She is still improving slowly. In the past 12 months she has only had one episode of reflux vomit. She complains about it coming up into her mouth a lot but it is under control to the point that it doesn't go past her mouth.

She is over most of her aversions. all excepted un-toasted bread. She can tell us she is hungry. But for the most part she doesn't until it is too late and she is way past hungry. Her attitude gets really combative and that is usually our cue that we need to try to get her to eat. She still considers it torture to have to eat. We do have more good days then we did before. There will be days where dinnertime is fun and she has eaten every thing off her plate a handful of times. She now has a sweet tooth. Where as before she wouldn’t even eat ice cream.

She is still a very tiny little girl. She is 41 inches and teeters between 30 and 31 lb. She has a fun personality and her hair has finally started to grow. She will be getting her first real hair cut soon. It is very very curly. She is sleeping through the night most nights now.

Connor dealt with reflux until just after his first birthday. We put him on holistic enzymes and he responded well to them. Eventually we took him off of them and he has been a great eater and sleeper ever since. He has just turned two and is growing well and, like his sister, has a great personality.

Sue

It sounds like Savannah has come a long ways, Sue. Keep thinking on that! Hopefully the new incentive of playing outside with the neighbours will catch on with her and help with the eating.