Mom Can't Keep Up

lunch break!

botanical gardens

So many changes!

First things first, Calder weighed in today at a whopping 17 lbs, 4 oz; 26.6 in long; 16.75 head circumference. The nurse had to come back into the room to double-check her head measurement, she said he’d had such a big growth spurt! Dr T was equally impressed with his growth. He’s on the chart now for all dimensions for his chronological age, even if it is just 1 and 2% for length and head circumference, and 8% for weight. I’ll take it!  We didn’t map it on the graph, but she said he’d be somewhere around the 25^th percentile with his adjusted age.

With all this progress comes more change. Dr. T says it’s time to ditch the dairy-free diet and see how he fares. We were never SURE he had an intolerance or an allergy, although it certainly did seem to clear up some digestive issues. Even so, she says she thinks his gut is ready to handle it, and we can give it a try (but watch out for blood in the stools, she says – fantastic.) According to her it’s time to quit fortifying the breast milk with the special hypoallergenic formula, Allimentum Sensitive + Iron, and move to something more in the “normal” range, something for sensitive stomachs but not something designed for lots of allergies. Next, we should start adding water to his diet to help him move everything on through the system. Apparently, we should have been flushing his G-tube all along, but no one ever told us that. (I say that, but they could have – I’m sure we missed one or two important instructions on discharge day.) And, super exciting to me given how much I appreciate food myself, we get to introduce solids!

As if that weren’t enough craziness, Dr T told us it’s time to let Calder PO ad lib. In other words, let him eat by mouth when he wants and as much as he wants.

This could get tricky. Calder currently goes down (starts, anyway) around 9pm, may wake up once before we go to bed at 11pm, may wake up around 4-5pm, may not wake up at all. Regardless, we wake him at 6am to feed, and then let him sleep again until about 9:30 or 10. Dr T said, do you need to wake him up? For the most part, I felt like yes, I do. We had tried condensing his feeds into a shorter period before, but it made him throw up more, and he does not need any help in that department.

breaking in the new pack

Her response was to say, why don’t we let Calder drive his diet a little more? Why don’t you let him sleep through 6am if he wants to? Oh, and quit fortifying his food. BUT still make sure he gets all the calories he is required to have throughout the day. Let him take what he wants when he wants and just gavage him at the end of the day.

Yikes.

This is what moms of term babies deal with, right, taking cues from their kiddo, trying to make it mesh with their own lifestyles? We had JUST gotten into a really nice groove with Calder, where he was sleeping on cue during the day, sleeping through the night, digesting all his food in time for his next feed (which hadn’t always been the case) and now I’m told that I can treat him like a normal baby, AKA switch it all up right when I am going back to work? Don’t get me wrong, this is *great* news. But this should be really interesting. I can see us getting to the end of the day and being 20 oz short. You don’t get to just dump 20 oz in an infant’s stomach at one time, right before you lie him down for the night. At least not one who is already on medication for GERD.

I’m getting a little ahead of myself, though, because she suggested I run all this by our GI NP, who we see on Monday.

At PT this week he more or less refused to sit up on his own, but Cristiane said she could feel that he was much stronger.