Oddly Enough

Oddly enough I don't feel like I failed. Now I really have to reason to feel like I did but it's just one of those things that you would think you just might feel like a failure. Okay once again I should back up and explain a little more in detail.

So Rayne had her "4 Month" check up yesterday. I put it in quotations because she is much closer to 5 months than 4 but that was just when they could get her in. Any-who we went in and there was some good news and bad news. The good news is generally Rayne is healthy. No ear infections, no rashes, good movement. The bad news... can you guess?? That's right she isn't growing enough. Weight 11lbs 4ounces, Height 24 inches (They didn't tell me her head size). That's 3rd% and 25th% respectively. ekkk. Now I know some kids are just little but this plateau is not helping her get over breathing problem. I'm going to skip the details of that visit because well the fill in doctor just sucked and it was an awful experience. After the appointment while I was checking out Rayne was miserable I was almost in tears. The sweet nurses took one look at me and asked me what I needed and I told them I really wanted to see my family doctor. It was already 5pm so the double booked me into a slot for the next day so I could have a few minutes to discuss what we needed to do.

After a night of decent sleep, a morning filling at the dentist and Fred going to work early Rayne and I headed out to see the doctor. About half way there my phone rings and it's my doctor. He saw they had scheduled me to bring in Rayne and thought he could save me the hassle of waiting in the office and having to have Rayne poked and prodded again, and we could just talk through what to do about Rayne's size. Dr. Richards said he talked to the Pediatric Attending in the Peds clinic across the hall (we go to the family medicine clinic) about Rayne since there are several ways to treat slow growth. What the Attending recommended was half a scoop of formula powder (about 1/5Tbs) in 3-4 ounces of breast milk. Do this with every feeding. This will give Rayne 80-100 extra calories a day. Which should be more than enough to get her back on track pretty quickly, but small enough that when she does catch up she won't lose weight when we go back to just straight breast milk. I had a couple of questions and we just talked about how we were going to follow up with the calorie intake. We decided to go ahead with the little bit of formula for the next two weeks. At that point we will do a weigh in and see how she is doing. If she is still low, we will probably have to run a few more tests and find out if there is another problem going on. We are hoping for good steady growth so that we can see how long she may need the extra calories.

So I went and bought some formula, Enfamil. I've know a couple of people who have had success with that brand after breast feeding. And I had a $4 off coupon, oh and it came in a smaller can. Since we are using so little and once a can is open it's only good for a month I wanted to minimize the risk of waste. By the time we got home it was time for Rayne to eat and she took to her 'Fortified Milk' very well. I had worried about it being thicker and harder for her to swallow but she did just fine with it. That was only a few hours ago and Rayne has been napping most of the time so we will see how this all plays out.

But I overall I don't feel like a failure. If Rayne was 'normal' my milk would be enough for her both in calories and amount. Not to mention I wasn't crazy for asking all the questions I did. As my doctor put it, "I'm being a really good mom and I'm did absolutely everything I could for her on my own."

New Recipe

Today I discovered a new recipe, one I'm going to use daily for the next three months!

Bittersweet Love
Ingredients
1 Amazingly Precious Baby
1 Nebulizer
0.5mg/2 ml Budesonide

Directions:
1) Pour Budesonide into Nebulizer. 2) Hold mask over Amazingly Precious Baby's face 3) Turn on Nebulizer 4) Listen to Amazingly Precious Baby cry, while you continue to hold mask over Amazingly Precious Baby's face. 5) Once Budesonide is gone (approximately five minutes) take mask away from Amazingly Precious Baby's face 6) Turn off Nebulizer. 7) Enjoy some of the sweetest hugs and cuddles from Amazingly Precious Baby.

Can anyone guess we saw the Pulmonologist today? It was our scheduled two month check up. I was glad to report that Rayne has had some improvement. She isn't squeaking, she can play on the floor on her back, and she is sleeping much better on her belly. But we are still having some feeding difficulties, and general noisy breathing. Upon check in the nurse noticed that her weight gain isn't what it should be. What was her weight you may ask?? 11lbs 3oz, for you statistics buffs that hits just below the 3% line. So this of course was the main concern of the doctor, because she will grow out of this condition but she has to GROW for that to happen. Dr. Mahesh asked about her eating habits and I told him we were still doing 100% breast-milk in bottles and although we do have some feeding troubles she takes 27-30 ounces a day. Dr. Mahesh agreed that she was getting plenty intake, she must be spending too much energy breathing. Which not only makes it hard for her to grow out of her condition but it could delay other milestones as well. So how do you get a baby to grow? Make it easier for her to breathe of course. My heart jumped for joy that this doctor was more interested in treating the cause and not a symptom. Because I'm sure there are some doctors out there that would have told us to switch her to formula to fatten her up and assume the breathing problem would go away after that. I don't like those folks. So the medical supply company ran over a nebulizer for me, it took ten minutes for them to get to the doctors office, it was awesome not to have to go pick it up. We left the doctors office with a nebulizer, a prescription and a follow up appointment in three months.

After Rayne's nap we sat down to do the very first treatment. It wasn't the funnest thing in the world but it wasn't too bad either. She didn't care about the air or the noise but the Budesonide does sting which made Rayne uncomfortable. But as soon as the Budesonide was gone she was back to being all smiles. She wanted to be cuddled but she still was smiling away.

Overall this treatment is suppose to help ease her airways so it is less difficult to breathe and more energy can go towards growing. It of course will take some time but it is better than some other options and most certainly better than nothing.

That is the report for now.

PS- The mask has froggy eyes on it, that's just the one the delivery guy picked up. it was like it was all meant to be :)