Wednesday wasn't a great day. At lunch time, I walked into the kitchen to find Henry covered in vomit. Alicia was on the other side of the kitchen eating something. She said that he had just done it 10 seconds earlier. Henry didn't seem upset, but it was yet another colossal episode. He vomits about twice a week. And by vomit, I don't mean a little bit or just spit up. We are talking everything in his stomach comes out.
Jeff and I aren't sure what to do. He doesn't vomit for us. It's almost always for Alicia and a couple times for my parents. I can't figure out what the trigger is. Dr. Bianchi said that we could try him back on Reglan to increase motility. I bit my tongue from saying that there is no way in hell I'd ever let my child take that awful medication. Frankly, I don't think that they have tested it thoroughly enough. It was the medication that gave Henry insomnia when he first came home. Five weeks of only sleep 1-3 hours per day. I think that we'll pass. Besides, and as I told our friend Steve (who is an expert in health communication and the Internet), I know that I'm basing judgments off of anecdotal evidence through message boards, but there are a lot of women on the boards I frequent who have taken Reglan for increasing breast milk production and then ended up majorly depressed to the point of having suicidal thoughts. What if doctors are giving it to kids who end up majorly depressed but don't have the vocabulary to express those feelings? Yeeesh. To Reglan, I say "Thanks, but no thanks."
But where does that leave us with Henry? Dr. Bianchi said that there was a product that he used to take b/c Reglan didn't work for him. He has reflux issues too. It was excellent, no psychological side effects, but alas some people had heart arrhythmia problems. Apparently, you can get the med in Mexico, but again, I think we'll have to pass on that one too.
I didn't ask about erythromycin, which is an antibiotic that also happens to stimulate motility in the intestines. If we can't figure something out, then I'll ask about. I'm not particularly crazy about the idea b/c I don't want Henry to build up a tolerance to antibiotics, just in case he needs them for their primary purpose in the future.
I didn't get home until 9:30PM last night. Yesterday was a teaching day but then I had to finish editing my third year review application for work. Henry was wide awake. It took us until about 10:30PM to get him to settle down. I don't know what time he finally drifted off.
Henry woke up around 6AM this morning wanting a bottle. He went back to sleep and didn't get up until 8AM. Alicia was feeding Karina breakfast when Henry woke up. I decided to make Henry breakfast this morning. I gave him a bunch of foods that he could self-feed on. My thought is that maybe the problem with spoon feeding is that he doesn't know how to say no. Jeff and I rarely feed him baby food. We almost always give him what we are eating and some additional stuff (like turkey, puffs, chicken, cereal bars, etc.). I can't say that Henry ate much. He rejected cantaloupe bites, had a few piece of banana, rejected some toast, ate some hash browns. At one point he stuffed way too much hash brown in his mouth, so I asked him to spit it out. He spit it out without vomiting, which was good. I made some scrambled eggs. He had a couple bites. He was mad that I wouldn't let him play with the fork. I did, however, let him guide the fork to his mouth with the egg on the end by himself. He did a really good job. I'm going to have to buy some additional toddler forks today. The one that he has was dirty and I wasn't exactly comfortable letting him handle mine on his own, as he likes to swing silverware around.
Jeff and I plan to start up the Probiotics again. Maybe his motility isn't great b/c the acid blocker (he's on Prevacid twice daily) has wiped out all of the good bacteria in the gut. I hope that's the trick, because we've had enough major vomits to last a lifetime.
That's all for now. Jeff's not feeling good. I'm beginning to feel queasy too. I'd say that Henry has caught it too (maybe that's the reason for the vomit), except these major vomit episodes have been going on for about 2 months now.
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