Well, it's been a pretty good week for Garrett.  Feeding him what he wants seems to be making things better.  He must have been going through a growth spurt when we couldn't get him full.  He must be coming out of it because he has sometimes been leaving at least an ounce out of his 4 ounce bottles the past few days.  Sometimes he will still drink 4 oz. and sometimes he drinks 4 oz. and still wants more.  I just let him tell me how much he wants.

He had a super-fussy evening Tuesday night.  I think he was still hungry but we were trying not to overload him right before bed.

The BM's have pretty much resolved themselves at this point.  At one point in Riley's first year journal, I finally wrote that I would no longer keep track of his BM's.  I guess I've reached that point with Garrett.  YEAH!!  A long road!

He is still getting really "snorty" at night, so last week I finally ordered the smaller sling for our reflux wedge.  We are going to try it out for the first time tonight and see if it is going to work.

I am still using Gaviscon and the Levsin drops when necessary.

Riley has had better days though.  He has been pretty ornery this week.  Thursday, in the wee hours, I heard him over the monitor, very restless in his bed.  My husband got up to check on him and the next thing I knew, he was running through our bedroom to the bathroom with Riley held in his arms.  Riley had thrown up in bed.  He ended up throwing up one more time.

I called the after-hours nurses line because his temp was 103.4 degrees.  She said I should take him in to be seen.  We were expecting a terrible storm midday on Friday and I didn't want to wait and decide to go in the middle of that, so I decided to go ahead and take him in.  I thought I was taking him to the children's ER, but they close at 11 PM and it was 4 AM when we got there.  Only the regular ER was open.  So I wasn't crazy about that, but we were already there, so we signed him in.

Miraculously, we didn't have to wait long.  The doctor decided to draw blood and to check his blood sugar levels.  Riley was such a brave boy!  But the doctor also wanted to get a clean urine sample by inserting a catheter.  I didn't know what to do, but relied on the ER doctor's advice which was to get the sample and make sure he didn't have a urinary tract infection.

It was awful watching him go through that.  But he was such a brave boy.  More brave than his mommy!!  The tests were "non-diagnostic" and did not indicate anything in particular, but they were going to rerun the urine sample.  They gave him some Tylenol finally and he was able to go to sleep. 

He slept when we got home, but after a few hours, all heck broke loose.  It became very apparent that it was severely painful for him to go to the bathroom.  I cannot describe in words what his behavior was like.  He was getting delirious, asking to be held and when I would pick him up, immediately asking to be put down.  I went through heck trying to get someone, the ER, the pediatrician, to tell me what I could do for his pain and no one had any answers.

The pediatrician got the test results from the ER and the Dr. thought there might be a small indication of a UTI, so they called him in an antibiotic.  But said there was nothing I could give him for his pain beyond Tylenol or Motrin.

He finally started feeling better in the evening when the Tylenol and Motrin kicked in.  Then the huge storm hit and we had to head to the basement.  Luckily, he was feeling pretty good while we were going through that, but ended up having a horrendous fit again when the pain started up again.  He was trying to crawl up me while I was holding him and clawing at my clothes.  It was almost more than I could bear!  A bath and more Motrin calmed him down and we finally got him to bed.  We were SO thankful that he was able to sleep through the night.

Today he has been doing very well as far as the fever goes - it seems to be gone.  But he would still say "hurt" throughout the day.  I felt so awful for making the decision to let them do the catheter, but I didn't know what else to do.  I'm just angry that no one discussed with us what to expect afterwards.  I knew it was going to be uncomfortable for him, but I did not expect for him to be in the excruciating pain that he was in.

I know this is Garrett's journal, but this event pretty much has consumed the last couple of days, so I wanted to include it to say that's why I haven't had time to update this journal properly.

I may end up going to one weekly update instead of a daily one.  Garrett is starting to come around and my time is getting away from me these days.

Garrett still doesn't sleep much during the day and likes to be held, so don't get the impression that he's suddenly turned into one of those *sleeping* babies!  It's just that he doesn't seem to be in as much discomfort as before.

He will still give us a good run of sleep from about 8-9 PM to 2-3 AM, but after that, he's up every 2.5-3 hours.  We're going to start up with oatmeal cereal in his nighttime bottle again tomorrow night.  I'll know not to put so much in this time.

I hope you all are having a good weekend and I'll update again when I can.

I pray for you reflux parents often, so keep hanging in there!!