I feel like I've been so absent from Friday Follow!! Well, I have. Alayna has been sick with strep for the past week and I'm a little frustrated at my pediatrician. The pediatrician refuses to give any antibiotics. I'm no physician but I used to get strep five times a year for 15 years. (No joke.) I was given antibiotics every single time. I'm just being told to give her Tylenol. Doesn't that seem off to you?? I'm worried that Alayna is gonna turn out like me with being prone to strep. I finally got my tonsils out when I was 15. My pediatrician (related to Alayna's) never believed in tonsillectomys. I just feel like mother's know best, and I believe that's 100% true.
I remember reading a post about mother's intuition on Theta Mom's blog. There were many follow up blogs to it because it's a great subject and it's true. It was very interesting reading the stories of how mothers were right over doctors or over teachers and so on. I have a great story of mother's intuition as well.
Alayna was born prematurely. Surprisingly, she weighed 8lbs 7oz. (At almost 35 weeks - Yes, my dates were right.) She ended up in the NICU for quite a while because she had some normal problems that many preemies have, despite her weight and length. Her main problems were digestive issues and feeding problems. She wasn't born with the sucking reflex and therefore had to be fed through a gastro tube. She would not take a bottle no matter what, and I was assured that it was something she just hadn't developed since she was premature, but it could be learned. She said sucking is an involuntary action for babies, however it has to be developed. It felt like an eternity that Alayna had the gastro tube, especially to a mother driving 45 minutes each way per day to go to the hospital to be with her daughter. They kept trying the bottle, wanting her to get the hang of it and sometimes she did, sometimes she didn't.
When Alayna started to learn how to suck on a bottle, she would take a few small ounces of formula and then throw it all up...violently. This led to the gastro tube being put back in because she would throw up everything she had taken in. Even so, for me, the smallest amount that she drank from a bottle was cause to celebrate.
This continued to happen for a long time and her weight started to go down. They could not figure out what was wrong with her. Me, being the determined person I was, went online and began to research. The next day before I went to the hospital, I went to Babies R Us and bought everything that I had read about to try. I was hesitant that the NICU wouldn't allow me to try, but we had this one amazing nurse Carol who was very caring and understood my feelings. She let me try what I wanted to.
The new formula I had brought in and the new bottles semi worked. She didn't throw up as much formula as she had used to, but it was still cause for concern because in order for her to leave the NICU, her body weight had to be over a certain amount and consistent for two days straight. She had to stop throwing it up and the hospital had no idea what the hell was going on. Which frustrated me even more. Isn't a neonatologist supposed to be knowledgeable? Aren't they supposed to know everything? I had many emotional ups and downs there. I would burst into tears, I would scream at the neonatologist. All of which are very common in the NICU because of the pressure the moms are under.
One day after doing research I came up with something that sounded just like what my daughter was going through. I printed everything out and took it to the nurse Carol. There was a covering neonatologist there that day and she listened to me very intently. The article was about infant reflux in premature babies. She thought it couldn't hurt to give it a try, so she ordered many GI tests for Alayna. Turns out, I was right. She had severe reflux. Once they put her on Pepcid and started giving her a lactose free formula, the throwing up stopped, the constant crying stopped and she was my happy little baby. Almost two months after she was born, she came home. I owe all of that to mother's intuition. If I hadn't stepped in and did my research, God only knows how long Alayna would have been in the hospital.
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