Dear LactNet friends,

Your pooled wisdom would be *greatly* appreciated.  I have a mom that I see
on a regular basis in meetings that is at the end of her rope.  Her story is
shared below with her permission.  It is long, but any insight would be
appreciated!

Hannah was born at 37 wks after an induced labor due to pre-eclampsia. She
> was 8lb 1 oz at birth. It was an uneventful birth and hospital stay. At 2
> weeks old she started having episodes of gasping for air during  She was put
> on Zantac at that time. It helped some but didn't completely help her. It
> also seemed to lose effectiveness within a week or so. We had an x-ray test
> done where she was given barium to swallow and then x-rays were taken. All
> of her anatomy appeared normal. This ruled out pyloric stenosis. She was
> diagnosed as having reflux and laryngomalacia.
>
> She was then put on prevacid for her reflux. This worked better than the
> Zantac, but still didn't completely take away her pain. I began a dairy free
> diet when Hannah was about 6 weeks old. By this time she was on a low dose
> of the prevacid solutab. We had to gradually increase her dose, switch to
> the capsules, and go to three times per day dosing to get her full relief.
> We use a buffering solution developed by the University of Missouri to
> suspend the prevacid in a liquid solution and make the dosing independent of
> feeding times. She also choked occasionally while nursing. This sometimes
> also happened when she spit up or had silent reflux. We did feeding therapy
> to work on her suck, swallow, breath coordination.
>
> By about 4 months old, Hannah was doing very well. She was up to 14lb 2oz,
> having gained about 3 pounds in the previous 2 months. The high dose
> prevacid was working well. She was nursing often and well. The choking and
> squeaking were gone. Controlling her reflux and some time had taken care of
> the laryngomalacia. She was on track with her milestones. She had
> torticollis though, so we began PT for that. She also started having ear
> infections at about this same time.After several infections we took her to a
> chiropractor and the infections cleared up.
>
> Having been exclusively breastfed until this time, we started her on solid
> foods at about 7.5 months old. We started with avocado, sweet potato, and
> bananas. We moved onto other fruits and vegetables. I made all of her baby
> food so we could use breastmilk to thin the solids for some extra calories.
> She crawled around 7 months old. She pulled to a stand around then as well,
> very active Her growth began to slow, Between 7 -9 months of age she gained
> only a few oz. Between 9 and 12 months she gained about 17 ounces. At one
> year she weighed17lb 2 oz.
>
> Shortly before her first birthday, there were some blood tests run on
> Hannah. Everything looked good except her iron. It was very low at 17. The
> minimum normal was 50. We started 2 months of iron supplements. We used a
> special iron that was in the form of iron amino acid chelate, also
> containing Vitamin
> B12 and folate. After 3 weeks, we noticed a drastic increase in appetite.
> She also stopped being obsessive about trying to eat rocks, mulch, and dirt.
> Her weight gain picked up as well. Between 12 - 14 months she gained 2#. She
> started walking just before 13 months and is a very active kid She is doing
> well developmentally.
>
> We hoped that around a year she would outgrow her reflux & dairy issue.
> However it's gotten worse in the last few weeks, she's 15 months now. She
> has gained 1 ounce over the last month. The reflux seems to be worse than
> before. We began seeing an comprehensive medicine nurse practitioner in
> addition to our family doctor. She had a urine analysis done on Hannah. It
> was mostly normal, but there were just a few values that were way off. It
> also indicated some yeast of an unusual type and some bacteria that
> indicated a bacterial infection in the digestive track. We also rechecked
> her iron and found that it was still exactly the same in spite of the 3
> months of supplements. We did a stool analysis. It shows an increased amount
> of strep bacteria. It also showed some extra candida parapsilosis and many
> microscopic yeast spores. Her stool was negative for parasites, giardia,
> cryptospridium, and a variety of other common issues. Her digestion /
> absorption numbers look good. She tested negative for mucous and white blood
> cells in the stool. But, her lysozyme was 799 as opposed to a normal max of
> 600. The lab reports a normal value of lactoferrin of less than 7.3 and
> Hannah's was 783! Her secretory IgA was 459 while the high end of normal is
> 204. She also tested positive for Occult Blood.
>
> Hannah nurses a lot during the night and several times during the day. She
> also eats three meals and a few snacks of table food. I am still on a dairy
> free diet and she is as well. She is still on the high dose prevacid. She
> also gets a probiotic daily. We have started cod liver oil, vitamin B12, and
> vitamin D. She and I are both doing Nystatin now to eliminate the yeast
> that she has.
>

They are getting ready to do a colonoscopy in the next few weeks.  Mom is a
bit scared that the GI at Riley will want her to wean.  She also has an
(unhelpful) sister saying that "so and so had issues and they switched to
formula/stopped nursing and everything fixed itself" Mom doesn't believe
that but it isn't helping.  Since writing this she has cut out all soy and
gluten on my advice and also stopped eating beef on the advice of her
comprehensive medicine NP.  They are mentioning things like Crohns disease.
She just wants her baby girl to gain some weight.  Any ideas you may have
that I could pass along would be greatly appreciated!

Sincerely,

Suzanne Stauffer, LLLL
anxiously anticipating IBCLC results in 10 days!

             ***********************************************

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