Bye Bye Baby Reflux

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Baby Reflux blows….

It blows chunks (har har har…)

Forgive me, I’ve had too much coffee and I’m too excited to be able to write this post.

Today… for the first time since my son was born, 9 months and 19 days ago, I didn’t clean up any piles of puke, or have to layer on three bibs, or have to change my own clothes, or have to smell the wonderful perfume that is stomache acid and sour milk.

Yep…baby got reflux.

It was described to me by the doctors as an under developed flap of some sort, so instead of food staying down in the belly where it belongs, it comes back up.

Wow, that’s not good… how do we fix it.

Oh well as long as he’s gaining weight it’s not a problem.

It’s not a problem…..??? You want to tell that to my washing machine?

For the past nine months I have lived in two sets of yoga pants, and two sets of jeans and rotate out of them based on which one has the least amount of sick on it.

I have run the washing machine almost every single day.  I have gone through up to ten bibs a day and had a constantly rotating supply of spit up cloths (I had to get the six layer ones for best soakage).

Puke has ended up in my hair, pooled in my bra, under my butt, down my back, on every piece of clothing I have worn, on my daughter, on my skin (and it burns…oh how it burns), in my shoe, in toys, on every surface Baby has been put down on, in little piles all over the doctor’s office (I’ll never forget the doctor laughing as she kept having to move him down the bed to avoid sick piles so he could be examined).

I have tried every different type of cream to treat his skin.  Because constant sick has given him constant rash on his chest and chin.

I have been told he must be allergic to this or that, I have changed formulas multiple times, I have made him sleep propped up.

I have had a rather obnoxious public health nurse tell me she understands my plight because her niece once got sick on one of her favorite outfits.

I have had a less obnoxious, but totally incosiderate doctor’s aide telling me it reminded her of her son who still AT 18 doesn’t eat very well and never really got over it!!!!!!!!!!

I had high hopes that it would get better when we moved to solid foods, but it just got oranger… and smellier.

But ….. like all troubles in parenting…. you get up, you do the best you can every day and you love your baby as he is (and secretly hope that the desired flap will develop sooner rather than later).

I don’t know if this is sooner or later…. but it’s today….

Today is the day that there was no sick.

I don’t know what tomorrow will be like, but today I’m sitting here reflecting that with patience, work, and a lot of love you will always get somewhere better.

And I’m thinking that the absolute insane misery that is baby reflux makes a fun blog post