Spoke Too Soon

I love being a mom. Addie is perfect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. See what optimism gets a person?

At 10 p.m., we fed Addie. She was acting really uncomfortable and refusing the feed. Allen was feeding her and asked me to see if I noticed anything amiss. I took her and she ate ok, but then starting squirming around and acting like she was in pain. Addie has a pretty regular schedule and routinely poops (with much fanfare, I'll add) while she eats her bottle. Tonight, she'd been making all the noise and doing all the grunting, but no poop. Then, she finally gets some action. She's still refused a lot of her bottle, but otherwise seemed ok.

You know the voice. The "this is not ok" voice you hear from your spouse, mom, kid, who ever, when something is serious. "Trace, please come here" and I jump from the couch to the nursery door immediately worried. Addie managed to poop. Blood. Really, there was a little poop with some blood. A little concerning. Not rush to the ER concerning, but bothersome none-the-less.

Can I just mention we had seen the dr. today!?! Did she bloody her pants then? Nooo. Of course not. So, we call our poor neighbor (who, I'm sure, has now changed all of her phone numbers and locks) and she says call the doc. The doc says (and I knew this was coming - I mean when Addie was born I knew this was coming) "milk allergy". Why is that a big deal? It's not. In the grand scheme of things, it's a very small blip. But, it does entail the dreaded "formula game" to figure out if it really is the problem. It also involves buying the incredibly smelly (as in Lexi barfed it up for 18 months, smelly. By the way, did you know that the olfactory senses are some of the strongest for helping to recall memories? As soon as I got a wiff, all of my precious memories came flooding back.) and very, very expensive formula. Like, $28 for 3 days worth, expensive. And that doesn't even guarantee it will work.

Lexi had a milk allergy so why wouldn't Addie? Allen's family has seriously jacked up stomachs, too, so why wouldn't he pass it on down the line with our second kid? She's already on lactose free stuff because the nurses in the NICU felt she was fussy. I just had a mommy hunch that this whole formula thing wouldn't iron out very easily. So, I ran out to the 24 hour store at 11:15 to get our "miracle gold". Of course, I'd made all the bottles for the night so I dumped those, washed the bottles, and made brand new when I got home. We get to be on poop patrol for the next couple of feeds. If it gets any worse, we'll be on our way to the ER. If it looks better, we will likely be on this ultra high end formula for the first year. I'm still trying to see the bright side, but it just proves there are no free rides on the parent trap.