pls tell me I’m not alone

I am sorry you are having such a difficult time right now. It does get better. My son slept 25-30 min naps for pretty much his first year. Many times I couldn’t even get him down in the crib because he was already up screaming. It made my day like it was never going to end. He was so cranky we could not go anywhere and I still had to deal with my other son. My oldest got yelled at because there was nobody else around to yell at to make things better.

My son was pretty much in bed at 6:30 everynight because he was so tired. It was after his 1st birthday his reflux improved & he started sleeping more. He is still all over the place as to how long he will sleep during the day. He pretty much sleeps at least 1:20 min naps sometime more.

For me its not my friends baby that is perfect…it’s looking at my first son. Every time I look at him & ask why did I get stuck with all this with my second son. My first son is a prefect sleeper, eater, etc. He is so much easier than this one will ever be! I feel the same about being punished for something I did wrong but I am always told God gave him me and all his problems because he knew I could handle it.

Every time I have a bad day or get mad at him I remind myself how thankful I am for his problems. I know things could be a lot worse.

Hopefully he will start feeling better and you can get some sleep!

shelby,
im wondering if you are still considering the sleep study you were talking about?

also maybe giving an H2 blocker in the evening?

nataliachick72006-12-10 19:35:24

Shelby

Is he on any foods yet? My son only slept 25-30 at night also. He also screamed every night 3-4 hrs a night for 3/4 months. After many months of trial and error we found it was the foods that he could not tolerate. Once we removed everything from his diet and gave him time to heal he started sleeping through the night again.

i have a question…say you have the tests done and see that the reflux is severe, etc. if the child is already on a high dose of PPI, what can they do?

Hailey has been waking every 30 minutes – 1 hr for 18 months now. I know that’s not what you want to hear. I now know when the reflux is waking her, and when it’s something else, or when it’s behavioural. I haven’t noticed a link to any specific foods with her, except possibly corn. We haven’t been able to eliminate soy b/c it’s her main source of intake, so that might be it in our case. It is exhausting.

I think that the others have a good point about maybe testing. Then you’d at least know if it’s reflux or not? Is he still in his amby bed? If so, that might be part of the trouble- Hailey started to feel quite cramped in there and started waking just to get bounced around.

It was a relief to me when I had Hailey’s scope done to know that she didn’t have any damage going on. We’ve yet to have a probe b/c the doc won’t do one.

Good luck. I hope you get some answers and some relief.

Shelby,

I’m so sorry to hear about your situation! Just to let you know you are not alone…like Lori said, you may not want to hear this but my son woke an average of every 1.5-2 hours until way past 18 mos of age. There was a one month period of time where he woke every hour or 30 minutes, and I distinctly remember going to the pedatrician to BEG for help (our specialist was useless at the time) and then realizing when I got in the car to leave that i was mildly hallucinating in the parking lot. That’s what severe sleep deprivation will do to you.

Suffice to say, I sympathize — understand– and you MUST turn to other things at this point. If his ppi dose is HIGH, then testing is a definite avenue. No one can live like this. Also, when things got really bad for Lucas we started making severe dietary changes. We removed dairy, soy, beef, all reflux inducing foods/acidic things (ie. tomato, citrus, etc. etc.) and eventually we removed all gluten and that seemed to be the final final food thing. My son is not testing allergic to ANYthing….yet protein intolerances can have serious affects on these things as well. The allergist tells us he hopes Lucas will outgrow the protein intolerances by age four. With ph probe testing and endoscopy we found he has a hiatal hernia. This was a huge piece of hte puzzle for me because it explained why no patterns really fit for us.

Although you may not want to go these routes, eventually teh sleep deprivation will make you so desperate that you will beg for something to change or happen. This is what happened for us. We hemmed and hawed and never demanded testing until things got really out of hand. I felt bad about changing my diet until things were so miserable that I didn’t care if I ate AIR, it didn’t matter. So I understand the reluctance of dealing with a dh who maybe isn’t on teh same page, etc. etc. Yet, you must take care of yourself and your little one, and part of that is really if your gut is telling you something, you must go with it. If testing will help you, then that is what you need at this point. Serious reflux can do serious damage to their esophagus, and these are things to watch for. Serious protein intolerances and food allergies can also do their damage, and can affect teh way they eat and when they grow out of the allergies/intolerances. Sleep deprivation for babies can’t be good. Neither is it good for you. With all that said, my son is thriving and we are sleeping much better, not every night, but there is excellent improvement, so there is hope!!!

Please keep us posted as to what you decide. We also tried all different combos of meds. Have you tried carafate at night? Zantac at night? ppi split three times during the day? ppi split at least two times with higher split at nighttime? Different types of ppis? Sleeping elevated? sleeping on tummy? Just curious….

I wish you the best.

Hey Shelby, I wrote you an e-mail but I just read this post and I just wanted to stay – TAKE HIM OFF BANANAS!!!! They are evil. Just my personal opinion . And YES YES YES we were up every 30-45 minutes sometimes for weeks on end and food introduction was one of the biggest mistakes I ever made – it was not entirely reflux related.

I was also dead set against testing myself – every child and mom is different, I guess you need to know in your gut what your child does and does not need. I truly believe that the least invasive route comes first. Some docs want to jump right into testing and sometimes your so tired and sick of watching your child suffer you’ll do anything, finding a diagnosis route that is tailored to your child instead of just a general diagnosis route is obviously preferable. To abide by the least invasive rule of thumb, you must take ALL other measures to rule out every factor. Like Anne pointed out – an elimination diet needs to be considered for sure. If after going on an elimination diet and ensuring that the right type and dose of meds doesn’t work then of course thoughtful testing has to be considered. I wouldn’t feel bad about not doing it just yet though. . I didn’t have it done and I figured it out through trial and error and making changes accordingly.

Hope things are improving. .. and BTW Anne is the person I was referring to in my e-mail when it came to being the other leading expert on food/reflux/nightwaking issues so I’m glad she already gave her two cents. .. shes a good example of doing everything she could from least invasive up until the final problems were seperated and diagnosed.

Liz

lovemysophia2006-12-12 12:57:34