Bloody and Bowed

I surrender

What else do you do when you've been up all night, your baby refuses to eat for NINE hours, and you end up force feeding him out of a syringe while he screams?

He is now on meds.

P.S. FINALLY found an awesome pediatrician, thanks to my friend Julie B. We are going to get the reflux straightened out and then do a process of elimination to see about any allergies.

Gastroenterologist

Today me and my little buddy go to the GI specialist. I'm really excited actually. Trying to figure all this out on my own has been nerve wrecking and stressful. What about my pediatrician, you say? Yea, his diagnosis was "grumpy baby". He has since been fired and I meet with my new one on May 1st. It'll be good to go armed with info from this specialist today.

My diagnosis? Poor kid is allergic to the milk and soy protein and responds to the allergy with acid reflux symptoms, among others. We shall see.

He is now on hypoallergenic formula. Tastes like rabbit food smells. Seriously. I tasted it a few times. Nursing has all but failed. I was prescribed medicine to get my milk back but it has some pretty wretched side effects AND is secreted through breast milk so I'll talk to the specialist about that too.
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UPDATE:

Worthless, completely worthless. I waited a month to get into a "specialist" only to have to convince the nurse practitioner that my case was good enough for the Doctor to come in. At one point she even tried to give me the whole "well, you're a new mom paranoia speech" Oh NO you don't!

Little Kristofer was being darling and smiling his little face off too so that didn't help (hahaha) but when the Dr finally came in he was screaming his brains out as I was trying to feed him then making the "reflux" noises after. So finally she tells me, "Sounds like he's refluxing". And I'm like, "YA DONT SAY!" Jeeze. What a waste of time.

So I left with another prescription of Zantac. Thanks. That's two now.

P.S. He's actually doing SOOO much better since he was on milk so I can't help but blame the milk allergy. We are talking SCREAMING all day, diarhea, eating less and less, screaming during sleep, crying when he swallowed, acid smell all over his mouth and my clothes, trouble sleeping, hoarse voice, congestion, it goes on and on. He is 100 times better.

So the lady is telling me to put him on Zantac and I'm like, "Well, if he's allergic to milk, instead of giving him something he's allergic to and then a drug after to fix the allergic reaction...how about let's NOT give him milk and NOT have to give him drugs. It's not rocket science people. Idiots. The only problem is he still shows some of the signs of refluxing, just minor. He said it peaks at four months. He's doing so well, I really hope it doesn't get worse.

My diagnosis: He has a minor case of acid reflux that is aggrivated by a milk allergy
My plan: Keep on keeping on.

The Mini

Kris loves having a little mini. They are two peas in a pod and the two best lookin' guys that I know :)

New Look

Something about having a baby makes me want to experiment with my look. Kinda of drastically. I figure, why not? I'm not exactly in tip top shape anyway so why not try something new and by the time I lose all the weight I'll look normal again. Haha.

Kris was eyeglass shopping today so I tried on a few and he FELL IN LOVE with the whole "journalist" with bangs look. Well, I DID study broadcast journalism...

Seriously, I hate bangs and I haven't had them since 8th grade. Everyone used to call me Winnie Cooper from Wonder Years when I had them. Ha. Not sure I could go back to bangs again.

Have any of you had the whole post baby "makeover" bug? And if so, is it a horrible, horrible mistake to go for it...kind of like when you impulsively send an email that you REALLY should not have written but don't realize it until you push CLICK and then you are mortified?

Will that happen to me with the scizzors?

SNIP SNIP

Starting Early

"I'm pretty sure there's a lot more to life than being really, really, ridiculously good looking. And I plan on finding out what that is."



Derek Zoolander: Well I guess it all started the first time I went through the second grade. I caught my reflection in a spoon while I was eating my cereal, and I remember thinking "wow, you're ridiculously good looking, maybe you could do that for a career."

Matilda: Do what for a career?

Derek Zoolander: Be professionally good looking.

Learning how to smile

The first smile session. We laughed soooo hard. It was adorable! I'm so glad we have it recorded.

Haha. He was trying so hard but not quite sure how to do it...

Getting closer

Got one side working...

Now how do I get the other side to work too?

There we go!!!

SUCH A CUTIE!!!

Heroes

This is my mom. She is amazing. I can't even scratch the surface in a post. Today I went to the grocery store with the baby for the first time. I must have looked helpless and awkward because people were falling over themselves trying to help me. While I was walking down the isle with ONE small baby, I thought of my mom in a grocery store with children 5,4,2 and 6 months. Amazing.

When I had my baby she came for 15 days and then went straight to my sisters who also just had a baby to help her for 10 days (and her five kids) and then went straight to my brothers to babysit their SIX KIDS for a week while they took off to Hawaii and THEN came BACK to my house with my Dad so he could meet the baby too. She was gone for over a MONTH doing service for us.

When my mom is around I don't have a worry in the world. She is the most wise woman I have ever met, cracks me up to the point of tears all the time, and is unfailingly selfless.

Thanks Mom, I love you.

Hot Yoga or Gross Yoga?

I've never been to a Yoga class. Kris is begging me to go tonight. Trouble is, it's not just yoga it's "hot yoga". Ok, let's do weird body stretches in a REALLY hot room so we all sweat on eachother. I'll be honest, sounds really gross to me but he's begging and if I say no, I'm just being lazy.

Anyone ever done it? I've heard it's disgusting and I've heard it's amazing. Thoughts?

If I do it every day will it take me back to pre-baby body below? Right now I'm sporting all kinds of love handles and if we wanna talk about hot...well, it's super hot. Especially when I try to squeeze into pre-baby clothes.

But if you want to see TRULY HOT yoga, come to my class tonight to witness me in my workout clothes.

So, I will never fit into my wedding dress again...but why would I need to? Ha. In fact, it's for sale. Spread the word :)

If birthday wishes came true

1) Yep, that's what I got. Hahaha. Only ours is blue and used but still super cute (Craigslist, naturally). Can't wait for the baby bike seat and then we'll have full-on family bike rides on the beach. Ha. Hilarious.

2) Then Kris and I played at Disneyland...so fun to re-live our first date.

3) I also got a full night of sleep. After six weeks this was like heaven. NINE hours of heaven (thank you, dear).

3) But the only WISH I made was for my baby to get better. I don't want to jinx myself but he is getting soooooooooooo much better every day that I believe maybe birthday wishes come true after all :)

P.S. The culprit may be a milk allergy. I got him on soy about 5-ish days ago and he is improving every day. The past few days have been awesome. The first night I noticed major improvement I was so ecstatic I literally couldn't sleep. After the 3am bottle I just laid there and looked at his cute face until morning.

House hunting

Real estate - been a while since I've talked about this. We are watching prices in HB plummet and enjoying it.

In 2006 this house sold for $1.3 million.

Awesome...

P.S. They are now asking for $600k. I'll never get used to California prices.