We know so many people care and are curious about what has been happening that we decided to start this blog as a way to keep everyone in the loop.
About three weeks after Charlie was born we were becoming concerned with the MASSIVE amounts of spit up that would literally fly across the room. She was seemingly happy one minute and then there would be projectile vomit the next. After enduring this for a week I succumbed and called the pediatrician who had us come right on over to take a look. Upon examination the first thought was that she had a condition called "pyloric stenosis" or a constriction on the pylorus (where the stomach empties in to the intestine). She sent us for an emergency ultrasound and prepared us for what would most likely be imminent surgery. Of course, there was nothing. The pediatrician chalked it up to a virus. Weeks later and still having intermittent problems, Charlie was finally diagnosed with reflux. She slept in a nap nanny, was put on baby Zantac and seemed to be doing much better. However, she slept for very long periods of time, never seemed hungry and when she did eat it was for incredibly short periods of time....what little baby eats for three to five minutes and doesn't want to eat again until forced 5-6 hours later? I guess I should have known then that something was wrong.
Needless to say, Charlie never put on much weight. Although she was born in the 75th percentile and maintained that for the first 6 months of life she began to fall off the growth charts once solid food was introduced. Once I started weaning her off of breast milk the weight gain slowed to a virtual stop. As soon as she was on all solids and cows milk she stopped gaining weight all together and fell off the charts, she stopped growing in height as well. Our baby who was once in the 75th percentile was now considered "failure to thrive."
Not only that, she also began having violent vomiting episodes. Sometimes they would last several days. Quite often the food was completely undigested from meals eaten HOURS beforehand. We also started noticing that she had an extremely distended stomach. She literally looked like she was nine months pregnant with a rock hard belly every time she ate.
Armed with this information, I asked the pediatrician for advice. Her initial thoughts were that she must have a milk protein allergy so she sent us to the most expensive allergist in town (the one who of course does not accept insurance). After throwing away almost $1000 on allergy testing I was told that Charlie was allergic to virtually every food any human could possibly consume. She needed to steer clear of dairy, eggs, wheat, soy, chicken, turkey, fish, berries, tomato, oats, etc. So, here we have a kid who can't gain weight, yet we can't feed her anything!!! I bought into it VERY briefly until I decided this was not the answer...something else was wrong and from there we took the advice of everyone else around us (and not that of our pediatrician) and found a pediatric gastroenterologist.
This is where the true journey began!!!!
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