Thank you Mr. Esophagus
It's been a rough couple of weeks in the Ophoff home. Calvin's pediatrician decided to change the dose on his Zantac - cutting it nearly in half. By the end of the first week following the poor kid was pretty cranky, but by the end of the second week he was downright miserable, 
so we complained and the doctor gave a script for Prevacid capsules, the insides of which were to be dissolved, as the nurse told us, in his breastmilk. Ha ha ha. Over the weekend we tried everything - the little pellets just would not disappear into any amount breastmilk and getting them down his throat was not nearly as easy as getting them stuck to the side of the medicine dropper, the spoon, his face, his bib, our hands. He was getting maybe half of the medicine, which is why he was still a bear when Cortney called back yesterday morning and a different nurse told her to try water instead (never mind that breastmilk is 90% water). After a polite but frustrated conversation we finally scored an appointment with the doctor in the afternoon. 
The look on his face when Cortney told him the pellets didn't seem to dissolve was near priceless. No, he said, they aren't meant to dissolve, you put them on his food. Ahhh...and therein lies the problem. We had diligently been waiting for 6 months, as recommended by the AAP, and countless other organizations, and the nurse who had told us to dissolve the pellets was apparently visiting from another planet. In cases like these, the doctor told us, it is going to be better for the patient to start a little early on solids so as to get him the medicine and give him a little more in his tummy to weigh down his milk (they make dissolvable Prevacid, by the way, but it has Aspartame, aka Nutrasweet, in it, and babies just don't need that).
And that is how we came to this morning, with mom preparing whole grain brown rice 
cereal and dad giving the wee one a pep talk that went something like this: "it's a one way hatch! Food goes in and it doesn't come out! Mr. Esophagus is our friend!" But let us tell you, the esophagus isn't the problem it's the tongue. All in all the first feeding went very well! Calvin even seemed to enjoy it. More than a couple of times he reached for the spoon and pulled Cortney's hand to his mouth, but every other spoonful or so would be pushed back out by the tongue. We realize that it is a learning process - for all of us. We think it is also a bib destroying process. The good news is, we all had fun, and he got probably 95% of the medicine, which was the whole reason we had to start this now anyway. First feeding? We'll count it as a success.
life, milestones, parenting
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