Ear infection, onion, reaction, poo, poo and more poo

Last Saturday Iyla was completely miserable. She screamed almost the whole afternoon, hysterically! She was constantly pulling on her ear and it was quite red. After Abbey reacted to so many antibiotics for ear infections when she was a baby we found out that onion juice is an amazing natural cure and worked awesome for her. We decided to see if putting some in Iyla's ear would make her happier. Within a minute she was back to her happy normal self and actually fell asleep!! The next day she was mainly happy, but by night time was a crying mess again. I used the onion again and within minutes she was back to herself. Monday things began to go downhill. She refused to sleep, she cried and cried and cried no matter what i did. Onion in her ear did nothing. Monday night she barely slept and Tuesday she was even more miserable. Because she wasn't spewing i thought it couldn't be a reaction and i thought maybe the onion hadn't worked for the infection. I took her to the doctor but her ears were completely clear and nothing else appeared to be wrong. I didn't bother with anymore onion knowing her ears were now fine. Late that afternoon had been 24hrs since her last onion dose and she was finally happier again!!! The only thing now was that diarrhoea had started. But as long as she was happy, i was happy.
Now it is Friday and the diarrhoea hasn't let up. Sometimes all she is pooing out is big blobs of mucus and she has a terrible nappy rash. Poor poppet. We are hoping that it ends soon. She is still mostly happy apart from when her rash is hurting her.

Who would have thought though that it was possible to react to something through an ear?? It baffled me but it's really the only thing that makes sense. I guess we will know for sure next time she has an ear infection. I would still choose the onion over antibiotics.

Today i also had this thought. It was a thought that got me really excited. What if Iyla isn't allergic to apple, but because i cooked it in a pan that has cooked other food she is reacting to that instead. So we decided to use our trusty muscle testing again. We tested a plain raw apple which we have tested before and it tested good. Again it tested good. We tested the apple i cooked for her and it tested bad. We then held the pan against her and tested and that tested REALLY bad! I don't want to get my hopes up! But i am getting them up! I am going to buy a new pan that i will only use for cooking Iyla's food and we are going to retest apple! How awesome would it be if she can tolerate it!? Hoping and praying this is the case!!!

First solids- apple

So on Monday we started trailing apple with Iyla. Her very first food! It was exciting and a bit daunting actually putting food in her mouth for once instead of frantically trying to get it out. The first two days she wasn't that keen on the apple. She just spat it all out. But today, day 3, she ate the whole lot (she was up to 2 teaspoons) and she loved it. All morning she was happy as. Then she woke up from a nap at 1.30pm screaming blue murder. I thought she might just be hungry as she hadn't finished any of her bottles today. She still didn't want to drink it though. For the rest of the afternoon she cried, and whined and was extremely tired but wouldn't/couldn't sleep. She spewed a little but it wasn't too bad. I did notice lots of wet burps which made her scream and lots of putrid farts.

When Reuben came home from work i decided to do that muscle testing the chiro taught us to see if she was allergic to apple now. Monday and yesterday the muscle test tested good. But this afternoon my arm dropped. I did the NAET treatment myself straight away so now have to wait 24hrs to see if it's worked. Hoping and praying because this allergy isn't too bad (yet) that the treatment will actually work.

Good days!! Yay!!

We have finally been blessed with some good days. 5 in a row actually! It's been so nice! Apart from one terrible night and one slightly fussy day she has been happy, smiley, barely spewing, sleeping great and just being awesome. Such a nice way to spend the holidays especially. She is such an easy baby when she is feeling well.

She also turned 6 months old today! Where has the time gone? I love her so very much and i can't imagine my life without her. Even with all the hard times she is so worth it. Hopefully the next 6 months wont be as difficult as the past ones.

Positive!

It seems that there is just one thing after another lately and it has really been getting me down. I'm finding it hard to stay positive. So i've decided i need to write down some of the positives in life. I know that i am greatly blessed!

- I have God in my life to help me get through all the hard times!
- I have 3 beautiful children!
- Iyla's and Abbey's allergies are not going to last forever!
- We have good days where Iyla isn't in any pain!
- Iyla has slept through the night for 4 nights in a row!
- It is summer and we have beautiful weather!
- Reuben is on holidays so i'm not dealing with it all on my own for a few weeks!
- I have amazing family and friends!
- I am apart of a very caring, loving and supportive church community!

Reflux meds # 2 = FAIL!!!

Some people already know this but i thought i better update my blog anyway. On Thursday, just after i wrote my last post my doctor called and said she would like us to try another reflux med with Iyla. I couldn't get hold of the dietician still so we were kind of on our own. My doctor read out the ingredients over the phone and it didn't sound like there was any food product names in there that i knew so i thought we might as well try it. She wanted us to try Zantac. I picked it up that day and decided to try it on Friday. I had to give her 1ml twice a day. I gave her the first dose in the morning. She spat most of it out. For the whole morning she was really happy. Then 4 hours after she had the meds she started spewing. She did small spews constantly for 2 hours and screamed A LOT!! At the end of the two hours she did a massive spew but was thankfully happier after that. On Saturday morning she did a disgusting poo that exploded out of her nappy and soaked through her clothes. It was also full of mucus. Since that fail i have learned that Zantac is made using corn syrup. Wish i had figured that out before giving it to her...sigh.

Reflux meds = FAIL

I've been meaning to update this for a few days but i've been crazy busy and haven't had time. As my title tells you, the reflux meds were a big fat fail. So frustrating!! The first 2 days were good, she was lots happier, was sleeping better but was spewing HEAPS more. This already made me a little nervous but it seemed to be helping for the acidic pain of her spew coming back up. The 3rd day, she was terribly grumpy and sleep became a huge issue. Every sleep she needed to be rocked (well really shaken) to sleep. I was getting more suss by then but decided to give it one more try. Bad decision! On Monday she screamed almost all day long. Like a hysterical, in agony, someone please help me kind of scream. It was awful!! She was constantly pulling her legs up, wriggling and squirming in pain and there was nothing really that helped. I tried a bath but she wasn't even happy in there. Every now and again a tummy massage worked for a few minutes but then the pain just came back again. Getting her to sleep was a huge mission, but thankfully once asleep she was so exhausted she managed to stay asleep for 2 hours. It was a well needed break. Her spewing also became insane. It was one projectile after another, all over me, all over her, all over the house. She only did one poo a day during the trail but those were light green, so runny they just instantly got soaked into her nappy and there were globs of mucus through it. We stopped giving the meds and within 12 hours she was back to her normal little self. Poor little miss.

Now i just need to wait until i can get in contact with the dietician. She isn't replying to my emails so i think she may already be on holidays. Looks like things will be at a stand still up until the middle of next month. I'm in no hurry to start solids so now i just hope we can keep her reaction free for a few weeks. My nazi floor cleaning has started as Iyla is getting very ready to start crawling. She manages to get her self all over the place. I'm getting a playpen from a friend (which i keep forgetting to pick up) so hopefully having her more contained will make things easier.

I also want to take the time to thank everyone for helping me through this difficult time. I haven't been coping very well but to see how everyone is so willing to make me meals and give me words of encouragement and support mean everything.
A special thanks goes out to my amazing sister! You are the best! And my mum who is always a willing ear to listen to my complaining and help out in whatever way she can. Love you both a ton!

Just another update

It's been a bit of a hard past week, each day has slowly been getting worse. Iyla isn't reacting to her formula (unless it's building up to that...hoping and praying it's not!!) but she has pretty bad reflux from it. She is still very spewy and now hates laying down as it seems to cause her a lot of pain. You can just imagine how this is affecting her sleep. During the day she is taking hours to get to sleep once she is tired. She constantly squirms, screams and has to burp and spew. It's very tiring and extremely frustrating. Even when we hold her she has trouble falling to sleep, although it doesn't take as long. It's just a restart of the battle once she is put back in bed. I have raised her mattress to a 40 degree angle but it's not helping much. She is also only cat napping. Sleeping only 20-40min at a time. Randomly she will have good days and then sleep 1-2hrs at a time but that has only happened three times in the past week. At night it is still a huge battle to get her to sleep but once asleep she isn't waking too often. Usually 1-3 times a night screaming because she needs to burp or spew. She is probably just so exhausted from not much sleep during the day that she just passes out. Thankfully when she is awake during the day she is mostly happy, although yesterday was a horrible day of crying way more then she was happy. Her poo is still normal so that is what is telling me it's not a reaction.

I got a call from the dietician this afternoon and we are going to get a reflux medication prescribed for her and see if that helps. I already have a doctors appointment on Thursday and will hopefully get her onto Losec. I know it can take up to 2 weeks to see any improvement, i'm just hoping it's sooner. It's so hard to see my little one in pain so much.

Once the reflux is sorted out, we are going to start Iyla on a thickened form of neocate formula called neocate spoon. She 'shouldn't' react to this but it has more corn in it i think as the thickener and there are still a few kids that do react to it. If she tolerates it, this will be her first introduction to a solid 'food'. It will also hopefully help for the reflux.

Once we know she is tolerating the neocate spoon, then we will start with solids. I'm guessing this is all going to take some time so she probably wont even begin solids until the end of January, early February. I'm in no hurry though. It's all too scary! She is starting to get very interested in food though, she watches us so closely when we are eating and is always trying to reach out and grab it. She will just have to be patient.