Exciting Day for the Korsmos

Following up to the last post, the dairy fast didn’t last long.  My lactation consultant from the NICU said it wasn’t a great idea to eliminate dairy from my diet, and then our pediatrician recommended three things: gas drops (so we increased the dose to 3 times per day), burping more frequently (now we burp after every ounce or so), and limiting caffeine (I’ve quit drinking even the decaf coffee and Cokes).  I think the caffeine has made the biggest difference; we lost a significant amount of sleep the night after I had a mocha!

Yesterday was quite an exciting day.  We’ve had two very sleepless nights prior: the first with Lucas and his flu (which he’s now feeling more like himself) and the second with Paul’s horrible gas keeping us up until 2am.  But yesterday was a new day!  The boys were not affected (surprise!) by our lack of sleep.  They have both started smiling daily when someone talks or plays with them.  They were too cute to be upset with.

Lucas found a new tactic to getting a bath when he wants; following Naya’s advice, he had an explosive poop that went from neck to knees!  I’ve never seen so much poop in a diaper!!  He landed in the tub (happy as a clam!), onesie and all.  The excitement continued into the evening when we noticed an infection in his big toe was getting worse.  He has an ingrown toenail, and I tried soaking it a couple times during the day, but it was looking pretty nasty bright red and swollen by 7:30pm, so Lucas went to the children’s walk-in clinic, coming out with an antibiotic and instructions to soak it and push back the skin once the infection has gone down.

And our final and amazing event for the day: the boys went in their cribs while awake and stayed there!  You ask, “how did you manage?”  James cleverly elevated the head of their beds by about 4 inches, so now they sleep on an incline.  This seems to be the trick to managing the gas pain!  At 10pm, James came into the bedroom and said, “I don’t know what to do.  They’re both awake, but not complaining.”  Shortly thereafter, Lucas wanted to eat a little more, but then both boys were in bed, and so was James!  Who knew!?

Day 1 sans dairy

After many sleepless (portions of) the nights, I spent much time reading blogs and articles trying to figure out some relief for my poor little Paul’s extreme gassiness.  He’s completely off formula (so that can’t be blamed), and takes simethicone (gas drops) twice daily (3 times is maximum recommended by our doctor), yet he still would have such terrible gas pains that he wouldn’t fall asleep well at night and would wake up at times crying from pain and unable to settle back down.  At those times, he would only sleep on his tummy on his mommy’s tummy or in his vibrating bouncy chair.
I finally found an answer to try.  A lactation consultant said that foods that cause us gas (primarily veggies and spicy foods) don’t normally cause babies the same gas.  She said the culprit is often dairy.  So after much (or not so much) deliberation, I decided that sleep was better than my daily glasses of milk, container of yogurt, slices of cheese…yes, I love milk, but I love sleep more right now.

Although the boys were still a little gassy yesterday, bedtime for Paul was…well, Paul went to bed like a lamb.  He was out like a light bulb and in his bed by 8pm (he’s never been asleep in his bed before 10:30)!  So far, he has slept well with little-to-no gas pain.  He took a bottle of milk from before the dairy-free day, so I expect a little gassiness, and the L.C. said it takes a good week to actually get it all out of your system, but so-far-so-good.

Could this be the solution?  Soy-milk, here I come!  I now just pray we don’t have a “no-wheat, no-dairy” child!  (Lucas seems less affected by it at this point, so fortunately there will be someone around to drink the stores of frozen milk!)