pls tell me I’m not alone

[Anonymous]

For 4 days now I think, Justice has been waking every 30 mins. The longest stretches we get are an hour. I know he’s sick, but nothing I do helps. He has been sick for 2 weeks now. It started out as a double ear infection. He did antibotics for 10 days. Day 10 I took him back because things got worse. The second time I took him she said it was probably the reflux keeping him up. What I don’t understand is if he has been sick all that time why just now is he waking? My point of this post is am I the only one that has a child that has woken every 30 mins for more than a day? I feel like I am all alone in this. I almost lost it at church today. I was back in the nursery feeding Justice and my two frineds came in with their precious babies. One of my friends babies had reflux, but she was able to take him off his meds at 4 mos. The other friends baby is just perfect. Always happy and sleeps like a dream. I feel like i am being punished for something I have done wrong. I just want Justice to sleep and be like other babies. I feel like I am going to seriously loose my mind. How can I be so mad at such a precious baby?

[Anonymous]

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!

[Anonymous]

He’s sleeping the 30 min at night. Forget about naps. They are pretty much non existent. If he gets a nap it is 15 to 20 min. I am starting to feel desperate. I don’t like the cio thing, but I am starting to consider it. I honestly just can’t do it anymore. I am so tired my head is pounding.

[Anonymous]

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

[hellbennt]

maybe a ph probe would give you an idea of how severe the reflux is…I hope christine or anne can help…

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

shelby, if he is on a good dose of PPi, he should really be doing better than this by now. it would probably be a good idea to ask about having testing done. sylvia had her endoscopy and PH probe done when she was 8 months old and we discovered her reflux was much worse than i realized.

you have got to be exhausted both physically and mentally!!

[Anonymous]

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?

[Anonymous]

Let’s see if I can answer all those questions. Justice has been doing advacado and banannas for a month now. I also just started Oatmeal. He had been waking a lot before I tryed the oatmeal though. As far as testing my husband is against it. I would love to do a sleep study. We did tons of testing with our first son and none of it helped. I would also love to try zantac at night, but Justice’s doc doesn’t want to do it. I know a lot of the waking right now is because he is sick, but every 30 mins. seems a little excessive to me.If it continues I will bug his doc to give him the zantac. Has the zantac helped Trace? I do have to say he actually slept better last night. I don’t know if anything I tryed made a difference, but I tryed some baby vicks on his chest and I tryed a rice sock. A couple of ladies holding him at church said he felt tight. Both of my boys had reflux so I don’t know the difference. Oh, I put the rice sock on Justice’s belly and he actually pulled it up to his chest. I don’t know if that means anything or not.

Thank you all for taking time to read my post and reply back to me. I hope we do figure this out and I love the advice you ladies give. When I read your posts I feel as though I’m not alone in this. Even if Justice is the only baby out there waking every 30 min. You ladies are my life line. You help me to make it through.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

Testing sounds like a good idea to me. I know you said your dh doesn’t want any testing but you’re the mommy, what do you think? If you want them done you may have to do what I’ve had to do with my dh. Take Justice to the doctor….ask about the tests…..tell dh the doctor INSISTS. Usually my dh will leave it alone if I tell him the doctor INSISTS this or that be done. Do you have a doctor you can talk to and feel comfortable? If so, let him know dh is not for testing and ask the doc to support you by telling dh that these tests NEED to be done.

I do know how tired you are. Ellie woke every 40 – 60 minutes every night of her life from the age of 10 weeks until she outgrew her reflux at 9 months. BUT she was never properly medicated. Justice is on a high dose of PPI. He really should be doing much better.

Good luck and please keep us posted.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

p.s. We also looked into alternative therapies after the testing showed hiatal hernia and the surgeon recommended against surgery and our specialist said there was nothing more the medical community could do. We saw the chiropractor (specializing in babies), used aloe vera in addition to doc’s meds, and started using probiotics. These things were also in addition to the other changes we made. They seemed to help, although at the present time we are not using aloe vera, but still using probiotics, and see the chiro sporadically. We got very serious about food issues and asked to be referred to an allergist after seeing improvements with dietary changes.

[Anonymous]

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

[Anonymous]

I wanted to add a couple of things:

1. bananas are not welcome here either LOL – they really just do not go well with Matthew. They did for some time but i am pretty good at testing a food for 10days and i think that we have already failed 4 trials

2. a correct dose of medicine does not ensure anything. Matthew has had 2 endoscopies with biopsies, and a third one without. During the fist endoscopy, Matthew was def refluxing – A LOT. At that time he was on 30mg of prevacid, pepcid 2x per day and a motility drug – he still had mild esophagitis. Now, a couple of weeks ago, he had yet another biopsy – still showed mild esophagitis. It can be very painful. We believe that Matthew has slow motility probably because his symptoms disappear with periactin (used as a motility drug in some cases)… but just to tell you that if your baby is not well, you have to go ahead on the testing

3. again, not what you want to hear but oh my has Matthew been a horrible sleeper. I cannot tell you what worked because we tried so many things – changing the meds timing helped, introducing periactin helped, giving him back his pacifier so that if he is refluxing, he looks for it in bed, but also a lot of sleep training… now he is 16months old and sleeping better….

HUGS – it is so hard when you see no light at the end of the tunnel…

[Author]

Posts