Since our vacation, we have been having a really hard time getting Andrew to sleep again. We had made such great progress and seem to have lost it all. It is very frustrating. And we have been blaming it on our trip and getting him out of his routine. Well, its been 3.5 weeks and it still hasn't improved. Thinking it was behavioral, we have pushed him to cry longer and stay in his bed awake. Nothing was working.
Sunday, we had takeout for dinner and let the kids have some chicken tenders and fries (which they loved!). Andrew especially chowed down and was super happy during dinner. We put him to bed, as normal, and starting 30 minutes after he went down he began screaming. His cry was very strained and hoarse, he was congested and cough and arching nonstop. This continued through most of the night. As we thought about this the next day, we realized that he had greasy food for dinner and that his symptoms are likely all reflux related. We doubled his Prevacid (reflux med) before vacation and had kind of assumed that it had taken care of the problem. Now that we're thinking back, we started introducing many more solids around the time of vacation and we think his nighttime screaming has been pain and discomfort over the last three weeks! Its all reflux! Boy, do we feel like bad parents!
Monday morning I called their Georgetown Neonatal clinic NP and talked to her. She called in another med to try and we have removed LOTS from his diet that we have previously introduced. Lots of fruits that he loves but that may be acidic are out. We are removing all dairy (no more yogurt, which we just started and he loves!). And obviously nothing greasy or spicy at all. As he continued to scream all day Monday and was incredibly hoarse (also likely related to acid coming back up in his esophagus), Nana also took him to the pediatrician just to make sure we weren't missing anything else. He was exhausted at their office and barely interacted. For those of you that know Andrew, know that this is totally out of character! But the poor guy hasn't slept more than 3 hours at a time in about 3 weeks and is wiped out. He desperately wants to sleep but just can't stay down for any length of time. It is heart breaking to see...
So we are giving this new med and our diet changes a week to see if there is an improvement (none so far...). If we don't see an improvement, we will look at other medication options. With them both doing so well otherwise, we tend to forget about their preemie issues. We find ourselves having to remind each other that they're still only 8 months adjusted and still have some things to work through.
We were again reminded of this very thing today during Paige's physical therapy session. Paige will not bear weight on her legs at all. When her feet are flat on the floor, her knees buckle and she has no muscle strength to support standing at all. She is also not pushing up much with her arms and is far from being mobile. She is starting to get frustrated with this, as her brother crawls away from her and pulls up on things. We have been getting a bit discouraged with her lack of progress and her PT today basically told us that it could be several months for her to master these things. With our busy schedules, we haven't put as much time into her exercises as we probably should have, and we have vowed to devote a lot more time to working with Paige after work. Let's cross our fingers for some progress before she gets too frustrated watching her brother get so far ahead!
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