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Four Months Old July 13, 2005

I have now officially been to my wit's end and back...

When I last wrote, I was working on figuring out if Benjamin's fussiness and intestinal problems were the result of food allergies. What a difficult task that proved to be! After eliminating a few foods from my diet that I was suspicious about and still having a fussy baby, I went on an extreme elimination diet.

For about two weeks I ate nothing but rice, sweet potatoes, spinach, yellow squash, pears, and salt and pepper. The idea was to eat only one food from each food group that was least likely to cause allergies. I thought for sure Benjamin would start to make a turn for the better, but to my horror he actually got worse. There were days that I would spend 30 minutes trying to get Benji to sleep for 20 minutes when he had previously been sleeping through the night. I had read that colic was supposed to start getting better by three months, but Benji's "colic" was getting worse.

I was desparate to find out why my baby seemed to be in such terrible pain, so I tried to make an appointment with the pediatric gastroenterologist in Fargo, but he was booked until September. Ugh!Reluctantly, I decided to take Benji to the family doctor here. The doctor told me to stop beating myself up trying to find the cure for colic because there isn't one, but I just couldn't give up. I knew something was causing Benji pain, I just didn't know what that something was. I felt hopeless. I knew I couldn't live with a baby who screamed the vast majority of everyday.

Finally, I gave in and sent Benji to my mom's for the weekend. I told her to give him formula. I didn't feel I had the strength in me to pump enough milk for him while he was gone. Plus, I had a shred of hope that by some miracle the formula would help Benjamin to feel better despite the fact that baby formula is statistically more likely to cause colic than breastmilk.

So I went to the store and bought Alimentum Advance ready-to-feed. It claimed to be hypoallergenic. I was skeptical, but willing to try anything. Even if it costs $8.50 a litre! I also had my mom pick up the $100 baby swing we had previously decided we didn't need. It seemed frivilous, but I didn't care. We sent Benji with Grandma Peggy and Auntie Rachie and trusted that, whether or not Benji's fussiness got better on the formula, they would be able to show Benjamin more patience than we could at that time.

Then Jason and I spent the weekend relaxing together. We slept in and went canoeing on Saturday. We even sorta watched fireworks from our rooftop Saturday night. I missed Benji terribly, but was glad to hear he was doing much better at my mom's. I couldn't understand why the formula worked when the elimination diet hadn't. I worried briefly that maybe I was just a bad mom and Benji preferred his grandma and auntie, but Jason wouldn't let me think that.

That Sunday, my family brought Benji home and we all went to the parade together. Getting Benji back was a huge shock to me. He wasn't crying, but he smelled so different to me and he seemed overly tired. He even slept through a canon shot during the parade. I wasn't sure the formula really was having a desirable effect, so that night I breastfed him and within two hours he was back to screaming. Hmm.

The next day we put him back on the formula and he was happier than I'd seen him in a long time. I'd mistakenly assumed the formula was making him tired when he was just plain sleepy. That whole day and the day after, I barely heard a peep out of Benjamin. He finally seemed comfortable in his own skin...

Then, in an effort to save ourselves a little money, Jason and I went out and bought the powdered form of Alimentum formula. I thought the only difference was that one comes with water already mixed in, but that isn't the only difference. Benji got really fussy about six hours after being on the powdered formula, so out of curiousity, I looked at the ingredients on the side of the formula can and one of the main ingredients was corn syrup solids...ah-ha! Benji is allergic to corn!

The reason the elimination diet hadn't worked was because I was giving Benjamin simethicone gas drops which I now know contain corn byproducts. The rice cakes I was eating while on that diet contained corn byproducts as well. And to top it all of, did you know that salt with iodine and some table salts will have corn byproducts mixed in?

So the formula worked and I knew what was the source of Benjamin's allergies. But I didn't want to give up breastfeeding. Ending our breastfeeding relationship so abruptly made me feel distant and Benji smelled like someone else's baby to me when on the formula. I'm afraid to say there were a couple of days I let Benjamin spend a bit too much time alone in his swing because I couldn't get used to this totally different baby.

I decided to try a corn-free diet for two weeks and see if, by the end of two weeks, Benji would tolerate breastmilk without getting colicky. The list of foods I couldn't have was overwhelming, but I was determined to try. Jason and I took Jason's brother, Carter, to the cities for the fourth of July and while we were gone I had to eat boring stuff like baked potatoes and rice milk. And when we visited Benji's grandpa Kelvin, I had to turn down brownies and shish-kabobs. It wasn't fun at all, but I kept telling myself that I would need to learn about corn-free foods eventually anyways.

At the end of two weeks, when I tried breastfeeding again, Benji wasn't interested. Did my milk taste bad to him now? No, because he took expressed milk from a bottle. He'd just gotten used to taking a bottle and gave me the most upsurd look when I offered him the real deal. I was devestated. I cried and cried and cried and actually considered checking myself into the hospital for post-partum depression. I kept thinking about how my homebirth plan had failed and now my breastfeeding plan was failing.

Then I decided that Benji needed me to just do the best I could. He doesn't need a super mom who's on the verge of insanity because she's trying so desperately to hold it all together. He just needs a mom who does what works and doesn't compare herself to everyone else. I realised just how important it is for me to take care of myself so that I can be a patient and affectionate mommy. And I decided that since I had prayed for the Lord to make breastfeeding work and it hadn't, then I just need to trust the Lord. Scientists, psychologists, and experienced moms don't know what is best for my child as well as the Lord does.

To "celebrate" being done banging my head against a brick wall--ooops! I mean...breastfeeding ;) Jason cheered me up by taking me to "Johnny Carino's" the best Italian restaurant ever, possibly the best restaurant ever in general. A little bit of manicotti and some veal parmesean and I forgot all about elimination diet hell. :)

Things are going much better for us now and when I feel myself slipping back into frantic supermommy mode, I say a little prayer that the Lord won't let me mess up Benji too much. Lord, please make Benji "crazy haha" not "crazy uh-oh".

I suppose I should highlight a few of Benji's recent accomplishments so I don't forget them. He was rolling over before we stopped breastfeeding. At first I thought he stopped rolling over because the formula didn't promote his brain growth like breastmilk had and he'd forgotten how to roll over, but Jason said he thinks it's just because Benji isn't in so much pain that he's trying to crawl out of his skin anymore. I think he's right about that.

Benji is using his hands a lot more now. He can hold the bottle by himself sometimes and he's very good at pulling his pacifier out. However, getting the pacifier back in is literally really hit and miss for him right now. Half the time he can't seem to get it back to his mouth and the other half the time he gets it to his mouth but it's backwards. This amuses me, but it frustrates my son a great deal. I'm sure he'll get it figured out soon though.

One thing we are utterly thrilled about is Benjamin's laughter! Wow! what a beautiful sound. The first time Benji laughed for me (intentionally, not in his sleep) I was sitting on the bed with him and I had discovered a ticklish spot on his side. I was so pleased with myself, that I called Jason at work to brag a little bit. But I was soon out done by Jason when he managed to get several huge chuckles out of Benji on Jason's birthday. I guess Benji was holding out his giggles so he could make 'em a nice birthday present for daddy. Lately all we have to do to get Benji to laugh is simply to laugh at him. This works better for Jason than for me since I often laugh silently and make little more than a ridiculous wheezing sound.

Benji got to meet his Auntie Katie a couple weekends ago. Jason and I stopped by Grandpa Kelvin's mother-in-law's house to visit them.

It's obvious from her expression how much fun she thought this was:

Benji showed Grandpa some love:

After we stopped by there, we went to a family reunion with Jason's mom's side of the family. Benji got passed all around and didn't seem to mind one bit. He didn't fuss at all until it was 3 p.m. and he hadn't napped yet.

We left the reunion a bit early because we were going to take Benji and Jason's brother Carter to the twin cities for the fourth of July. It was a lot of fun.

Jason and Carter excited to go to the cities:

While we were there visiting the Mall of America, Benji got a bit overstimulated and started to giggle like he couldn't stop. Jason caught some video of him. It's too cute. When I learn how to post videos, I will add it to the site.

We also went to Minnehaha Falls state park while in the cities. Jason had been there before, and when he told me about it, I envisioned a tiny, overcrowded park in the middle of Minneapolis. I sure was surprised when we got there and I saw how big and how beautiful the park was. Jason and I spent most of that day navigating hiking trails with the stroller and snapping pictures of the scenery.

The scenery:

Jason and Carter pushing the stroller:

Me pushing the stroller:

Us posing by the waterfall:

Carter trying to climb a tree over the river:

Our last day in the cities, we went to the Minnesota Zoo. It was hot out so we tried to get going earlier, but it still got pretty warm walking around outside. We all really enjoyed the dolphin show though. Our videos of the dolphins turned out much better than our photos.

Dolphins are fast:

Trying to keep Benji out of the sun at the zoo:

Benji sure was tired out after such a big weekend:

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