This past week in adventures in parenting, my daughter started freaking out when we'd feed her. She'd get through about 2 ounces of her bottle and then totally melt down. She wouldn't take more formula, and she'd just squirm and cry. On top of that, she started spitting up more than usual. She almost never spit up before, but now she was doing it during pretty much every bottle, and it would smell acidic like it was actual vomit instead of baby spit up. I'm not big on worrying, because kids go through phases where they do weird shit, but uncharacteristic behavior makes me pause and go "Well....maybe I should call about that?" So, I called on Monday after she was just refusing to eat much and it was effecting her sleeping patterns and her mood over all. We went in on Tuesday morning and found out our sweet 3 month old is basically a 54 year old man with acid reflux. Her tiny baby esophagus isn't doing its job to keep acid down where it belongs, so it's starting to creep up when she eats and her stomach gets full, and it's burning, so the idea of eating more is just too much for her to handle. That leads to the crying, because it hurts, and her pushing her bottle away because she doesn't want it because she's associating it with hurting.
We were given a prescription for baby zantac to control the acid, and told that if she didn't improve in three days, to give them a call back and they'd adjust the dosage. We gave her the first dose when I got home from work that afternoon and that night she took a full bottle for the first time in a week, all without fussing or crying. Yesterday there continued to be improvement. She wasn't perfect, but she was doing much better than she had been. Today, my mom sent me photos of a happy smiling baby who hasn't cried or screamed once all day, even when she started to get tired.
Now I feel like we need to give her a new name. Something that sounds like an old retired Jewish man. Maybe we should call her Saul.
Glad it was an easy fix! Poor Sal!
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