Annabelle has gone exactly two weeks without her reflux medication. Two weeks. Two weeks!!
My little girl is going to be okay!
It has been a long and difficult road helping Annabelle and the whole family through life with Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease, GERD. Many people don't know what reflux is all about, or about the impact it can have on your day to day lives (sometimes hour to hour!), or the many things a parent will do to help their little one. Talking about it with these people was sometimes a relief, a chance to tell my story. Other times, I felt defensive around them, as if I had to prove that I was a good parent and didn't mistakenly DO SOMETHING to cause my daughter's reflux. Once I had an older woman tell me that she only realized through my sharing that her daughter had had the same problem but the doctors never figured it out. (This happens all too often!) And I was able to offer some moral support and practical advice to one parent whose doctor was trying to convince her to start medication to help with her daughter's GERD.
And, sadly, there were so many people who offered canned advice who knew nothing about the issue. Or felt that their singular experience with the disease made them an expert on the subject. GERD has tested me in many ways: I have come to realize the actual benefit of some alternative medicinal practices that I would have previously discounted as weird or "all in their mind", I have grown to be more tolerant of the ignorant ways people offer what they think is help, I have come to trust myself as a mother and am more willing to trust that other mothers are truly doing what they believe to be best for their child.
I only realized this past week that I hadn't believed Annabelle would be able to get off the medication this soon. I had fully surrendered to the idea that we would be going through our hated nightly ritual of medicine giving for at least the next two years. And I had expected some major ramifications during the last two weeks as her body adjusted to not having the medication, but there really haven't been any.
What a relief.
Reflux is a crazy thing for a parent to watch. It manifests itself differently in different people. It can cause permanent damage and lifelong stomach issues if not addressed properly.
Annabelle had terrible colic from week 2 to week 11. She had always been a big spit-up baby. But the spit up seemed to me like a lot. I called people. I asked the nurses. All I heard was, "Oh, yes, all babies spit up. It's normal. Don't worry. Totally normal." Finally, at four months I got out the measuring cup and started measuring the amount of "spit up" Annabelle had at certain times of day. I wanted to know for sure: What exactly was normal? Why were my alarms going off? Why did Annabelle cry after each spit up?
I was able to determine, with the help of my measuring cup and a few calculations with the nurse on the phone that Annabelle was actually vomiting several times a day. And her colicky crying at bed time was because GERD hurts like hell. Even at six months, after trying three different medications to see what worked the best, after trying to get her to sleep more than two hours in a row (didn't happen until a year, no kidding), after buying her a new bed that inclined, and putting even the changing table at an incline, after always making sure her head was above her stomach, and after going on a severe elimination diet and working to figure out Annabelle's food allergies/sensitivities, we still didn't have it figured out.
I know all those things helped a little bit. But I also know that Annabelle needed a lot of help. And I now understand what it means to be a mother who refuses to stop seeking help if her daughter is hurting, even if the medicine masks the problem. Sometimes doctors got frustrated with me. More frequently, I was the one getting frustrated with the doctors.
I know that, for Annabelle, chiropractic treatment was critical in her recovery. So was eliminating allergens from our diet. (Some people still believe that breastfeeding moms can eat whatever they wish because it really has no effect. I heard advice from so many of these moms and I never knew how to respond. I mean, really, they go ahead and eat at McDonalds and then watch their baby cry for the next day and a half and are STILL selfish enough to insist that they had nothing to do with it. Give me a break!)
But the last major breakthrough in Annabelle's recovery was so simple: we started eating organic. One doctor mentioned that there is the smallest amount of evidence that shows a relationship between reflux and pesticides. And so I did a little research and learned that pesticides are oil based. This means that they don't come off when you rinse them with water. You have to use a fruit/vegetable wash of some kind to wash it off. (They sell them in health food type stores. And when I wash our produce I can actually feel the residue coming off all slimy.) Also, pesticides are stored in fat cells. So the more animal fats you eat, the more likely you are to be exposing yourself to pesticides. We started buying organic produce and I gave up red meat completely. And Annabelle has started sleeping four hour stretches. She's even gone seven or eight hours two or three times!
And here we are now, looking back at 13 months of medication, knowing that it's finally behind us. For real.
I have wondered how many mothers out there know the anguish that I have felt, continuously, for my daughter's situation. And how many of them know the utter relief and joy and tears I have now.
