Hallelujah!

We switched Emily to Zegerid two days ago. It's a proton pump inhibitor, like Prevacid, but has an additional ingredient that changes the way it's processed in the blood stream. It's better in these two ways: it can be given without regard to meal times (meaning: no more waking the baby early to give meds 30 to 60 minutes before mealtime and if you've ever had to wake a baby and then make them wait half an hour to eat you know the hell I'm talking about and why this development is so awesome) and it's sometimes easier to digest for little tummies.

And the big deal about this is????? We've had two days now with no colic in the evenings. Coincidence? Who knows. WHO CARES! It seems we've finally settled into this respectable schedule (of course these times give and take a few minutes depending on who else has needs and what not, but we stay pretty true most of the time):

5 a.m. - wakes, but not really hungry. I put her in the swing, I rock with her, or put her in bed with me. She is writhing around the whole time, but if I feed her, she only eats an ounce and then ruins her whole day. It seems like as long as she is close to a body, she is more peaceful and stays happy longer. In the swing, she wakes every 20 minutes crying.

7 a.m. - Zegerid buffered with mylanta. 3 oz. Neocate thickened with 4.5 teaspoons rice cereal. Must be held or bounced until nap time or she cries and fusses.

8 - Down for nap.

8: 40 - nap disrupted to head out for swimming at 9. Sleeps in car seat until about 9:30 if a good day. I then have to hold her or bounce her to keep her from fussing.

10:30 - 3 oz. Neocate thickened with 4.5 teaspoons rice cereal. Little tummies. Must be held or bounced until nap time or she cries.

11:30 - nap in swing. Sometimes falls asleep quickly, other times takes up to 45 minutes. She hasn't been fussing as she puts herself to sleep so I don't bug her, even if it takes forever.

2:30 p.m. - Zegerid buffered with mylanta. 3 oz. Neocate thickened with 4.5 teaspoons rice cereal. Must be held or bounced until nap time or cries.

3:30 - Nap in swing.

6 p.m. - 3 oz. Neocate thickened with 4.5 teaspoons rice cereal. Little tummies. If colicy, starts crying around 7 p.m. and doesn't stop until around 10 p.m. Often refuses the 6 p.m. bottle and struggles with 10 p.m on those bad nights. No colic, easily takes 6 p.m. bottle. Must be held or bounced to be content. Bath around 7 p.m. Swaddled and in bouncer for nap until dream feed at 9:30/10. May need to be held to keep from squirming and crying from 7-9, but if held, won't fuss.

9:30/10 p.m. (dreamfeed - she doesn't wake up at all for this, but eats the whole bottle with ease) - Zegerid buffered with mylanta. 3 oz. Neocate thickened with 4.5 teaspoons rice cereal. Straight to bed. Sometimes, she goes down quietly. Others, I have to comfort her and offer pacifier.

Midnight/1 a.m. - she wakes but we give her the pacifier and she falls back to sleep. We've found she doesn't eat well at this time if we try to feed her and then she wakes up earlier in the morning and ruins her daytime schedule so we try to get her back to sleep until a little later on and she's truly hungry.

2/3 a.m. (Allen takes this feed) - 3 oz. Neocate thickened with 4.5 teaspoons rice cereal. Little tummies. Straight back to bed. Takes about 20 minutes.

5 a.m. - We start all over again.

We've been working toward this schedule for 7 long weeks. The colic has really disrupted the night time organization. Now that she is peaceful, she can have a more regular night and will go straight back to bed rather than needing to be bounced or walked to fall to sleep hours later. The days have been this way (relatively) for about 3 or 4 weeks. The bad nights would impact the day, though.

Having a couple of hours of quiet in the evenings makes a huge difference in a person's sanity. Specifically, mine and Allen's sanity. Just to let you know exactly where Allen is these days on children, he got up to bear his testimony in church on Sunday. He said "vasectomy" over the pulpit. I think that pretty much sums it up. Now back to the message at hand...We all know that with newborns you're on the clock 24 hours a day. There is no recovering because you don't even start your day over. It's like a lot of really long days that never end. You don't get to re-set. Let's face it: 2 hours of sleep at a time does NOT get anyone refreshed. But, to at least have a little time at the end of the day when all of the kids are quiet means the world. With this colic thing, we'd get our other two down and start the hardest part of the day when we were most exhausted. These two days of reprieve have really helped. Like I said, we're cautiously optimistic that the trend may continue.

Oh, and she smiles when I talk to her. She's cute when she smiles. Almost makes up for all of the ugliness we've had for the last while. Almost.