Puke-A-Palooza

Adam has, of course, had eating issues since early March. He was throwing up a lot then until we started him on Zantac. I know Zantac doesn't work for many babies with reflux, but it worked for Adam. At least for awhile. I even remember saying to Jim, "Adam hasn't thrown up for 4 days!" Those days are no longer. When I say "throw up", it's no little baby spit up. He throws up between 2-5 ounces, splat, on the hardwood floor after making scary cough/burp noises. Last Thursday, he started vomiting just about everything we gave him, including the squash. Pretty. Since it continued into Sunday and he was crying in pain, I took him to the ER. He wasn't dehydrated, thank goodness. They tripled his Zantac dose which I then discovered was too high a dose for him, thanks to the idiot ER doctor who prescribed it. Now that he's on the correct dose we need to feed Adam small amounts until the medication kicks in again. I calculated it once--how much of my day it takes to feed Adam--even on a good day. It is at least 6 hours of the day, sometimes 7. This is why we have NEVER both left the twins for even ONE feeding since we brought them home in January. It is so difficult to read all his little signs. Just because Adam starts to get upset, this doesn't mean he's done eating. It may mean he needs to burp again. It may mean he's tired. It may mean he's still really hungry. If you don't figure him out, he will throw up, guaranteed. And he will only eat sitting in a bouncy seat, watching TV. If he doesn't eat enough, then he doesn't gain enough weight--and as all preemie parents know--that's a lot of pressure. We've done pretty well so far being that he weighs 17 pounds, but I know he's lost weight in the last week. Some people may think I'm crazy--that if they just try, they will be able to feed him. Nope. It's not me, it's not them, it's that Adam doesn't like to eat most of the time. He deals with it, but it's not comforting for him, it's not really enjoyable. That's understandable since he's just going to throw it all up 5 minutes later, anyway. It's just something he and I deal with out of necessity. I hope this Zantac does it and he will be back to his good ol' puke-once-a-day self, rather than this crazy puke-a-palooza, but if not we have an upper GI scheduled in August and an appointment with a pediatric gastrointerologist at UofM as well. I'm just praying that this isn't anything even more serious than the reflux. Sigh. You can see why we don't get out much...