Carter was born in May of 2009. He was born at 35 weeks, which classified him as “near term”. I was on modified bed rest for over a month due to early contractions. His labor was pretty uneventful. After he was born, we were able to give him hugs and kisses and hold him. His breathing started to get irregular and he was taken back to the nursery and put on oxygen for 3 hours. He was returned to us sometime after midnight. He was beautiful!! He was so small and so perfect. Due to him being early and in conjunction with the fact that my milk takes over a week to come in, Carter was supplemented with formula. The hospital gave him Similac, the regular cow’s milk formula.
Carter was less than 24 hours old when he projectile vomited for the first time. He woke from a dead sleep and emptied the entire contents of his stomach all over himself and the side of his little hospital crib. It was curdled and not at all digested, although it had been hours since his bottle. I took a deep breath . . . we had seen this before. Our two older boys were both intolerant to milk and ended up on soy formula. I buzzed for the nurse and asked if they had any soy formula. The hospital didn’t have it readily available in the nursery, so she was off to find the doctor and see if they could get us some. We went home before they were able to get us any soy formula.
I continued giving him the cow’s milk formula in hopes that the nurse was right, and it was just a fluke one time thing. Looking at the situation now, through FPIES eyes, I have learned that there are no flukes. He continued to spit up after every bottle and was put on Zantac for reflux. He was constantly fussy and always in pain. I really thought it was the reflux . . . until he had his first bloody diaper. I was sure that the formula switch would fix everything.
He was three weeks old when we switched him to soy formula. And things went from bad to worse. The reflux worsened. He wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t do anything but scream. He looked like he was frightened all the time. My husband went to the store late one night to find another bottle style in hopes that he would eat. He ran into a woman in the bottle aisle who recommended the NUK bottles. Thank goodness for those. He was finally eating, but in pain the entire time. Just as I was beginning to wonder whether his body was rejecting the soy formula, we had our next bloody diaper. He was six weeks old when the pediatrician called to talk about our options. His recommendation: Alimentum, a hypoallergenic formula where the proteins are broken down. They are broken down so the body will have nothing to react to, he tells me. He also said that it was really expensive and didn’t taste good, so we might have problems getting him to take it at all. I cried. I cried for the suffering he was enduring, for the stress of the entire formula switching process, for the time it would take to notice a difference. Our pediatrician said to wait two weeks to see if it helped him. Then I looked up the price of the formula. Our current soy formula was 15 cents an ounce. The Alimentum would be 26 cents an ounce. I was nearly double the price! I will never be able to thank my husband enough for his reaction when I told him we had to switch formulas. He didn’t even hesitate. He told me we’d do whatever we had to do to keep Carter healthy and happy. That has been our motto ever since.
Once we switched Carter to the Alimentum, the difference was evident right away. He started eating better and sleeping better. He was a much happier baby. We were still battling reflux, trying to find the right medicine and the right dose to help him reach real comfort. I didn’t know it at the time, but the reflux was his body having minor reactions to the Alimentum. Again, the FPIES eyes have made it all clear now.
Even though he was doing much better, he was always in pain. There was never a full night of sleep for anyone in those first 6 months. Carter still vomited . . . all the time. There was never a night where I wasn’t awakened to him vomiting in his sleep or coughing and gagging as he threw up in his sleep. There were mornings where I would go into his room and see that he had thrown up in his sleep and never even woke up. Most nights I just prayed for morning to come. After every bottle, something always came back up, sometimes it was a mouthful and sometimes it was a full stomach emptying. It became our way of life, several clothes changes for both Carter and me everyday and blankets as burp cloths. Then our pediatrician suggested trying some rice cereal to help him keep his formula down, and our FPIES road really began.
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