Goodbye fourth trimester!

We made it! We survived the dreaded first 3 months, or 'fourth trimester' as it's sometimes called. It was a bumpy road but things are definitely improving. Her eating issues still haven't been solved, but otherwise she's a happy healthy girl. When she's not projectile vomiting or fussing in pain she is smiley smiley smiley! She will charm every stranger she comes across. Her vocalizations are a hoot...she's really getting serious about letting us know what she thinks! We practice having conversations and she is always a willing participant. It's so fun to watch her little personality unfold. I suspect once she learns how to talk she will never stop! 

I wish we had a house with a yard and a porch because she is loving being outside right now! Sitting on the porch swing, listening to birds, watching the trees, and strolling are all enjoyable activities. She even inherited my love of thunderstorms!! One day last week while we were at my grandmother's house she was being fussy, so we took her outside on the porch to watch the thunderstorm. She stopped crying immediately! Watch out Jim Cantore...there's another budding storm chaser in our household.

As my mom says, if we could just get her eating/pain issues solved she would be the world's best baby! We saw a new doctor (the 5th one thus far) a few weeks ago and he was incredibly helpful. He spent an entire hour with Bill and I talking about different tests, medicines, formulas, etc. It was so much good information that no one had ever bothered to sit down and tell us....it was always a 15 minute in-and-out-here's-some-new-medicine-come-back-in-3-weeks routine. This doctor was the first one that actually left us feeling informed and hopeful. I'm confident he will help us make her feel better. In the meantime though it's still a game of trial and error to pinpoint what's going on, and we can only change one variable at a time. At the last appointment he upped her Prevacid dosage (2 mLs, twice a day) but I can't see any improvement in her at all. I counted six separate screaming episodes while we were in Baton Rouge last week....one minute she's perfectly fine and content, and a split second later she is SCREAMING in pain and will continue to scream for 30-60 minutes. And of course the general fussy routine is still in full swing as well...eat,spit up, fuss and cry. Rinse and repeat alllll daaaaay looong. I just keep thinking this is a milk protein allergy, and until the doctor proves to me that it's NOT, I will keep bringing it up. Every time we changed her formula, she would do great and seem so much better for a few days. And then after a few days she would be back to her old fussy self. Acid reflux (which is what they say she has) doesn't act that way with formula changes. A milk protein allergy does. If it were 'just' reflux, she would spit up all day every day no matter what formula we tried. The fact that she would do better for a few days, and then go downhill again, has me convinced it's a milk allergy. (This would also explain her similar behavior when we switched from breastmilk to formula.)

The formula Wall O Shame.
You probably thought I was joking when I said we've tried every formula under the sun.

Notice the wet/dry line. Half her outfit is soaked from spit up! And this was
after only one feeding!! I do laundry in my sleep now.

Our next doctor appointment is Monday. We'll see what he wants to do next. Poor sweet baby girl. Happy 3 month birthday cutie patootie! 

Oh, and a little Winnie lagniappe too. He was scared to death we were going to drive off and leave him in Louisiana. He thought this would be an appropriate measure to make sure he didn't get left behind.