Overwhelmed and a bash on the medical field

Here is a really long post that unless you're bored, I'm sure you won't want to read.  But I need to get some stuff off my chest (it'll make me feel better, I promise), so I'm posting it anyway:

I am having a baby in a couple of months.  I don't know what I'm going to do.  Really.  I am very excited to have a baby, and how blessed I am to be able to have them.  But I'm also overwhelmed with my life.  I know all babies are an adjustment.  But babies with reflux are oh, so much more (some of you know what I'm talking about).  Levi, as a baby cried all the time.  ALL the time.  He would sleep only in my arms, so we slept in the recliner together for months.  I got out of my PJ's probably 2x a week, and I got a bath maybe every other day, but my bath was always less than 5 min, because he'd wake up screaming.  I estimate he cried 18 hours a day, every day, until he was 3 mo. old.  I called the pediatrician over and over, and his (ignorant) nurse told me to relax and give him gripe water.  "It's just colic" she'd say.  Ha.  I went in after hours a couple times when things seemed really bad, and the Dr. didn't seem to know anything.  At his 2 mo check, I told the Dr. when Levi nursed he'd break away screaming all the time.  That's the first time I'd heard anyone suggest reflux.  So they started on the mild meds, and by the time we got the heavy meds (Prevacid) going, and his esophagus healed, and he stopped crying , he was 3 mo old.  He turned into an angel baby.

Seemed like an easy fix.  I could deal with that.  Prevacid is expensive, but what a world of difference.  So, when Dana came along, and started showing reflux signs, I took her in immediately, and demanded the meds.  The nurse (different nurse, but equally ignorant) told me reflux doesn't start until 6 mo old.  Whatever.  Not to be cocky, but I think I know more about a lot of health issues than do most nurses :)  I read a lot, you see.  Anyway, I demanded an appointment with the Dr., and he willingly let us get the medicine.  Dana's reflux, I'm pretty sure was even worse than Levi's, though I never let her get to that point of un-medicated pain, so she didn't cry nearly as much.  But she had to sleep in her carseat until she was 4 mo old, even on a heavy dose of prevacid.  If I laid her down flat, she wake up within 3 min - and I could hear her first "urp" up something, swallow it again, and she'd cry and be awake.  It was obvious it wasn't just that she was "used" to her sleeping habits.  It was definitely heartburn.  Oh, and I even had to elevate her carseat even more than regular, or she'd urp herself awake.  Dana still had colic in the evenings (a mystery as well, but only 3 hours a night instead of 18 hours a day.  But still, poor baby in pain).  Levi was on prevacid until 6 mo, and seemed to have no further trouble.  Dana was 8 mo.

Does reflux get worse with each kid?  So I've been pretty worried about Dana lately.  She has anxiety.  I'm not sure from what, but she's fine when we go places, but at home, she's extremely anxious.  Making dinner around here is a joke.  I break so many dishes because I'm cooking with one hand and Dana in the other.  It's hard.  She cries whenever I put her down, even if I've been holding her for an hour.  I kept thinking she'd grow out of it, but she's 19 mo old, the baby's almost here, and if anything it's worse.  What am I going to do?  Really, what am I going to do?  She does sleep through the night (since 14 mo old - I know, I'm ready for some judgmental thoughts from you all, but really, I've read the books, did what they said, and it didn't work).  She takes a nap.  And she plays with her brother.  But she's clingy and anxious too much of the time where I don't know what a newborn on top of that will do to her or to me.  Then, as I was investigating the cause of the unending anxiety, I started noticing her silently urping inside.  Does she still have reflux?  Maybe that's why she's anxious. 

At her well check recently the Dr. actually brought up the reflux again before I told him some of the things I'd noticed.  And the dark circles under her eyes (and Levi's) are most likely a food allergy.  Great.

Is it all related?  I'm seriously losing faith in the medical field.  WHY do so many babies have reflux?  Has God really put so many tiny infants on the earth for thousands of years with severe heartburn and no way to treat it until the 20th century when prevacid was invented?  Makes no sense.  Isn't infantile reflux going UP?  It is, which is, I'm sure why these ignorant older nurses, and the older Dr's don't even know about infant reflux.

So what's causing it?  I've been reading around for months trying to figure out what to do for our next babe.  Prevacid was, of course, my back-up.  But what do I read?  Prevacid may be causing food intollerances.  Prevacid diminishes the acids in the stomach, so they are still refluxing, but it doesn't burn.  Well, acids are needed for digestion.  Uh oh.  See where I'm going with this?

So I want to start at the basics.  How to PREVENT the reflux.  Is it the epidural, the pitocin, the abx during labor for GBS, the HepB vaccine, what I'm eating, environmental toxins, the hormones in cow's milk (we've actually largely been off dairy for almost a year around here for various reasons).  Man, I hope it's not wheat.  Do you know how hard it is to make major changes to your diet?  Especially your children's diets when others aren't supportive? There is reason to believe that any or all or a mixture of these things could be leading to the problem.  The information is overwhelming

All I do is study health.  I don't scrapbook, sew, decorate my house, etc.  All I want to do is find out what the heck is wrong with my kids so I can fix it.  First I study it out, find out everyone has a different opinion, no one really knows what is wrong with our health in America, try to figure out what I think, then find recipes I like, talk my family into liking them, and feel like a "mean" mom when I don't want my kids to eat certain things. 

Dr's are all about treating symptoms.  It's true.  At my kids' well checks, the Dr. said, "Did she have reflux as a baby?  I think she still has reflux.  Here, let me give you a prescription for prevacid."  Treating the symptoms.  When I inquired about the dark circles under their eyes he said it was most likely a food allergy, but "we don't usually do anything about it if that's the only symptom."  Okay, so ignore the fact that a body is reacting to a food, since it's (at the present time) not bugging them too much.  Makes no sense.  That could explain why everything else is going up, too.

In Jason's and my immediate families (parents and siblings alone) we have:

Autism
Type 1 Diabetes
Asthma
Allergies
MS
Lupus
Thyroid malfunction
Breast Cancer (caught in pre-cancer stage)

What else?  I can't remember.  But all of them are auto-immune, and all of them are drastically going up each year in this country.  Interesting.  So I don't really feel like ignoring symptoms, or treating symptoms, because it's probably contributing to increasing rates of everything else.  Why are food allergies out of control these days?  Makes no sense.  MAKES NO SENSE, FDA, DO YOU HEAR ME?

So now what?  I have 2 months.  Two months until the baby is here.  Oh, and we are probably buying a lot and building a house in a couple weeks.  And I have so much to get ready for the actual birth (I'll tell you later). I can't change a diet in 2 months.  Do I need to make sourdough bread, drink raw milk, ferment my veggies?  That takes time and work.  I wish I had no other responsibilities than figuring this stuff out.  Maybe herbals will help (I've been reading a lot about that, too for this problem).  But I realize this is the bottom of a huge funnel of possibilities.

And anyone who has a crappy diet and has angel babies, I am totally jealous of you, and probably resentful, too.  But I at least hope you appreciate it.  You must have good genes. 

Mom:  Do you know why babies are so small?
Levi: No.
Mom: So they can fit in their mommy's tummy.
Levi:  Couldn't Heavenly father just make babies in the dirt, and we could go digging for babies?

Halloween

I was going for the homemade look this year - not the find a pattern and sew something elaborate homemade, but the throw-together homemade.  Well, these were anything but thrown together.  It took so much work, and I think I was a big grump the whole week leading up to Halloween (why not be honest?). So many trips to the thrift store, the consignment shop, the fabric store.    My mom made Dana's skirt, and I did all the easy stuff like hot gluing foam circles on Levi's pants.  But I LOVED how they turned out.  Looks simple, right? 

We passed out Oriental Trading Co. toys instead of candy.  But my kids still got plenty of junk.  Dana's pretty strong-willed and I usually let her do whatever she wants.  While trick or treating at Jason's work she ate a full-sized Twix, and that was probably half of what she ate that hour.  She'd scream if I told her no (I know, I'm creating a monster).  So I just let her stuff her face.  I figured the candy she ate there was probably, weight-wise, the same as me eating 10 full-sized candy bars.  On the way home in the car she crashed (and she NEVER takes a second nap anymore).  We were a little afraid she was in a sugar coma.  But she woke up.  Since Halloween is over, I pooled the kids' candy, put the chocolatey stuff in some cookie-dough that I froze for future FHE treats, took all the colorful stuff and am saving it for gingerbread houses, and now there is a manageable amount of candy left.  Phew.  Why do we do this to ourselves/our kids anyway?  I don't know any mom that's excited about the amount of candy at Halloween, and somehow we all feel obligated to buy it.  Weird.  I do love Halloween, though.