Mommy, this doesn\’t taste like chocolate…

This is my son. He is one happy baby. Here he is rolling around on Grandma’s big bed while Grandpa tickles him. (5-16-07; Five months, one day old.)

Jamie had his first piano lesson on Mother’s Day. I think he was going for jazz — a lot of dissonant chords.

He had a little trouble with the keyboard, but he finally beat it into submission.

He played Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star (with the help of Grandma) before launching into an original artistic interpretation of his own.

I expect Juilliard will be phoning any day now.

That is all.

We have discovered feet!!!

Feet are fun!!!

Jamie loves playing with his feet. It is very difficult for him to hold onto both feet at once because his tummy is so round it makes it hard to stay bent forward that far. But he does not give up, and every once in a while…

VICTORY!!!

I’m glad he’s got a new interest to keep him happy, because that poor little guy has had a rough week. Actually, we all have. Four hospital visits in five days — one for me (gallbladder), three for Jamie (see below). And now Geoff is sick — he has been very weak, very exhausted, and had an easily upset stomach for about three days. He says he’s feeling a little better today, but it will be a long, physical day for him at work. I’ll be glad when he can come home this evening and just sit in a chair and read a book or watch TV and get some real rest time.

Back to Jamie. I took him last Thursday morning to get his second round of booster shots (Pneumonia, Polio, DPT, & Hepatitis B). He did OK, so I gave him a dose of Infant Tylenol and dropped him off at daycare. They called me three hours later. He had peed blood in three diapers in a row. Just a small dot in the center of each diaper, but enough to alarm his teachers. (Why the hell it took them three bloody diapers before calling me I don’t know, but I’m just thankful they finally did!)

Anyway, I raced to pick him up and we went back to the doctor’s office, with all of the bloody diapers in tow. We got assigned to some young kid playing doctor (gotta love our “learning clinic”), who said it was very doubtful it came from Jamie’s urine, and probably just “rubbed off from where he received the shots in his thighs.” I wanted to jump over the table and smack him silly. The blood was nowhere on the outside of the diaper, only inside, and only right smack dab in the middle of the urine. COME ON.

Anyway, they sent us home again, where I spent the night collecting and cataloging eight more bloody diapers, recording date and time and all that on the front of each one. We went back to the hospital first thing the next morning with all eight wet diapers, plus a big fat stool sample for dessert. (Needless to say, we didn’t make any friends in the waiting room THAT morning!) The doctors couldn’t deny it this time or make up some stupid excuse. They sent Jamie to the hospital lab to have tests run. He was too little to wear a urine bag so they couldn’t collect any specimen that way, but they managed to check his blood for infection (like in his urinary tract), kidney function (normal) and liver (normal).

We don’t know what the heck caused this. The doctors refuse to even entertain the suggestion that the shots had anything to do with it – they said the perfect timing must have been just an “amazing coincidence.” (I am thinking that if the doctors find some of Jamie’s dirty diapers freshening the aroma of their BMWs’ leather interiors later this week, that might just be an “amazing coincidence,” too.)

They wanted to admit him on Friday to observe him, but when I asked them what they would be monitoring, they said, “Well, his diapers, of course.” I said, “I have been cataloging them all for you and bringing them in! He feels terrible. Why would I subject him to a strange room and an uncomfortable situation with random nurses waking him up at all hours to poke at him and make him cry, not to mention pay a $250 deductible on my insurance, all so you can look at his diapers, when I’m already bringing you all of his diapers??” They just looked at each other and didn’t say anything. I grabbed Jamie and took him home. The blood stopped sometime in the wee hours of Sunday morning and hasn’t been back since, so the hospital says it is an unsolved mystery and wants to call it “case closed.”

The thing is, both Thursday and Friday at the doctor’s office, Jamie had horrible episodes of reflux. Now despite my spending the last three months trying to explain to Jamie’s doctor how severe my baby’s reflux is, he never took me seriously. None of the medications have worked at all, and they cost insane prices. His soy milk hasn’t worked. The rice in his bottle hasn’t worked. He is still launching his bottle contents halfway across the room. But it wasn’t until last week, when the doctor’s nurse witnessed his projectile vomit two days in a row in the exam room that anything was really done about it. Basically, the doctor thought I was being overly dramatic and exaggerating over and over, until his nurse finally told him otherwise. Grrrrrr.

So now, the pediatrician wants Jamie to go to a specialist in Saint Louis. I am terrified, because they’ve already started pitching surgery. It’s reflux. No matter how severe it is, the doctor even admits he will grow out of it, probably around his first birthday. So isn’t surgery kind of an unncessary risk?

The real thing that makes me mad is that Jamie is forever getting congested — he goes to daycare, brings home illnesses, and the doctor always refuses to treat him with antibiotics, or infant cold medicine, etc… He always says infants Jamie’s size are too small even for baby Children’s Tylenol Cold medicine. But the coughing that comes with sinus drainage is what is making Jamie throw up all the time. It keeps triggering his gag reflux, and then he spews. Yet the only thing we’re allowed to give him for bronchitis, upper respiratory infections, colds, and everything else he’s gotten, is saline drops. AND YET THE DOCTOR IS IN A HURRY TO GIVE HIM GENERAL ANESTHESIA AND MAJOR SURGERY??? WHAT THE HELL????

Sigh. We have an appointment on Friday to discuss specialist options, even though I am really opposed to this idea. Because I know that even if we do take him to see the specialist, i’m sure we’ll have to go up there like five times before we have any answers at all, and I just don’t like the idea of Jamie going through all of that over and over. Other than puking all the time, he is gaining weight and getting taller. He is exactly on the bell curve for his age in both height and weight. He is a very happy child, he doesn’t seem to be in pain of any kind, and he has a very sweet personality and wonderful social skills already. I really don’t want to stick him in some hospital far away and spend every weekend in the car taking him back up there to be put through the wringer.

Do I want his reflux to clear up? More than anything in the world. But is something he’ll grow out of eventually really worth putting him through all of this?

I wish I knew the answer.

I think it involves finding a new pediatrician, though. Either way, we’re keeping the Friday appointment, but I think I am going to schedule a LOCAL second opinion before we race off to Saint Louis and expose Jamie to God-knows-what.

Poor little boy.