A little Nolan Health Update

Many of you know that Nolan has had tummy issues almost since the day he was born. Some days it seems to be worse, but others better. Recently, I took him into a GI Specialist because the age old excuse of "colic" just didn't seem to be right or accurate. Plus, he'd passed the critical 3 month hurdle and things weren't improving. It's such a difficult struggle as a mother, to hear your child crying/screaming in pain and not be able to do anything about it. Well...after two visits with the GI Specialist, they still just wanted to call it "colic" because he's gaining weight (he's just about the chunkiest baby I've ever seen!) and isn't passing any blood in his stools. Well, I just couldn't accept this because his screaming episodes were happening twice a day, always in conjunction with him going to the bathroom.


So....I decided to eliminate anything & everything from my diet that could cause him bowel issues. This meant eating only plain chicken & plain brown rice for every meal (yes, even breakfast) for an entire week. It was a very tough week and I was pretty cranky for most of it. But...by the end of the 7 days, Nolan was doing a ton better. He'd nearly stopped waking himself up in the morning grunting and crying in his sleep and even has managed to go #2 without screaming. This told me that something I'd been eating was definitely what was bothering him . Now, I've slowly added in more foods, but it seems like he has an extreme intolerance to dairy & eggs...which means I can't even eat bread, etc since milk & eggs are key ingredients. While this sounds like a huge pain in the butt, I have to say that it hasn't been too bad and the great benefits are that Nolan's tummy is doing a TON better and I can finally fit back into all my old clothes:)

Now, this next picture is one of my favorites. Because we sleep Nolan on his tummy (it's the ONLY way that he sleeps), he's at an increased risk of SIDS. Therefore, we've always used a monitor at night that tells us if he's stopped breathing. Well, a couple of weeks ago, the alarm went off in the middle of the night. I can't even try to explain how quickly Brian & I shot out of bed and ran to Nolan's room. Anyways, after taking him to a Pulmonologist to be checked out, they want to monitor his sleep cycles to ensure he isn't having any apnea episodes. So...we have him hooked up to an official monitor at night that records his heart & breathing patterns. At our last check-up, everything seemed normal, but they want to keep him on the hospital monitor until he's 6 months old, due to the peak age for SIDS being 4-6 months of age. At first, hooking him up to the monitor was a pain, but now it's become part of our nighttime routine and gives us peace of mind that our little guy is definitely breathing!