Norming

Baby E has been doing so wonderfully lately. The combination of reflux medicine, thickening her beverages to help with the aspiration, and being more careful about exposure to her allergens seems to do the trick.

It's been at least a month or two since she's had a screaming spell (other than the normal toddler tantrums, which of course happen frequently). She's becoming less clingy and needy as the days go by, although with her increased energy and climbing ability she is hard to keep up with. She is happy, energetic, social, and has the appetite of a bear.

She's not having diarrhea or huge quantities of undigested food in her stools on a regular basis. She sleeps through the night and wakes up cheerful, and almost always takes a fairly decent afternoon nap. She cries for maybe 5 minutes max when we put her down for naps and bed.

When she's not actually having an allergic reaction to something, she seems perfectly healthy and happy.

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I haven't given her the nystatin since yesterday at lunch time. Already most of the redness is gone from her cheeks.

I spoke with the naturopath today and she said it was fine to just take her off the nystatin. She was amazed at the detective work I had done to find out what was in the medication and how it was produced, and told me I should get a job with the FBI. :)

Since Baby E is doing so well, it may be that resolving the underlying issues and watching our diet could allow her body to deal with any opportunistic yeast overgrowth on its own. If she's worse after a week or so off the nystatin, then we'll probably look into a different antifungal.

Meanwhile, she said, "Just keep doing what you're doing. It's obviously working!"

The GI specialist nurse practitioner called today. She said that the upper GI study showed that Baby E was refluxing severely, all the way up into the back of her mouth. There were no other abnormalities found, so that's confirmation that we're taking the right approach with the reflux medication.

We will wait to hear back on the test results regarding the sugars in her stools, and schedule meetings in the next few weeks with the speech therapist and a dietician.

The NP also said that the combination of symptoms Baby E had after the upper GI study was fairly normal for a child with severe reflux after that type of study with that medication. So most likely it was a bad case of side effects and maybe an exacerbation of the reflux.

She had an adverse reaction, but not an allergic reaction. And it was not something really dangerous, just uncomfortable.

I had suspected that might be the case. Probably if she ever has to have this medication again, I'll just let them know she is very sensitive to it and ask if they can try to minimize as much as possible the quantity they give her.

From reading studies and other reports about it, it seems that the younger the child and the higher the quantity consumed, the more likelihood of having diarrhea from it. Some 30% or more of young children get diarrhea from ingesting this particular contrast medium. It also seems quite likely to me that the choking and sore throat/mouth could have been from all the acidic fluid in her stomach coming up into her throat.

All of this is so encouraging. I feel that we're finally getting to the place where life can begin to normalize.

Hooray!