The gremlins and I went on field trip...

to Starship

I took them to the doctor yesterday to get their bottoms checked as their nappy rash had blistered and was bleeding and the barrier cream and thrush cream weren't helping. He asked if the girls were normally well and I mentioned that I thought Mercedes might be a bit refluxy as I had noticed a few times that she had gone blue around the lips and eyes.

Wrong thing to say. He totally panicked and said we had to go to Starship for observation. I was totally not worried - she was obviously breathing at the time and her apnoea monitor has never gone off, but he said better to be safe than sorry. I rang the midwife to bleat but she said the same thing so off we went. I took Sienna too obviously as I am still expressing for them.

Long story short we spent the night there, she was admitted for observation and had a couple more blue spells that the nurses observed, but we finally got a sensible doctor this afternoon who agreed with me that it is probably reflux and that she more than likely has a milk allergy (busted not being on my dairy free diet ). So they have done a RAST test for milk protein allergy and we will have the results back next week, but in the mean time they have let us come home.

The whole experience was absolutely horrible. The last time I was at Starship Emergency was with 10 mth old Maya and I had a full on anxiety attack when I walked thru to the room they put us in when we arrived remembering how horrible it was with Maya. The nurses were brilliant tho, they organised a pump for me to express and took turns with Sienna so that I could look after Mercedes. Unfortunately they gave her a dummy while I was away having a chest x-ray with Mercedes, and then at 5am I gave in and let them give Mercedes one as well in the interest of getting some sleep (a whole half hour ).
They are so unsettled now, they haven't slept properly since yesterday afternoon. I have managed to get them to sleep, but they both still have dummies in their mouths. I guess we just have to go with what works.
We're seeing the paediatrician on Monday so hopefully he will have some ideas on what to do for the reflux.

Ditto

big hugs hunny hope they find somthing to help the germiln andthey settle soon

at least they are checking it out and not just saying oh she'll be right and then something was wrong. Great to hear you have a doctor who is on to it even if it did make a horrible 24 hours or so for you.
let us know when you get the results

Oh im glad you guys are home. Hopefully it is reflux caused by a dairy allergy, at least its a reasonably easy fix, and the most likely considering Maya had dairy allergy too.

Oh well will be interesting to see what the RAST comes back with, although as you know sometimes they can have an allergy and it wont even show up cause they are so young.

Hope your girls let you have a good stretch of sleep tonight.

moring emma hope you ot some decent sleep and the germilns are starting to settle. re the dummys i was tottaly agaist them was,nt going to give my baby a dummy but after 4 weeks of screaming it helped to calm him and now james has weaned himself of the dummy now so they are not all bad and if it helps them sleep then that can,t be hurting

They offered to test Sienna as well, but I wasn't keen on BOTH my babies being pricked with needles so I figure next time she needs a blood test we'll do it at the same time and if Mercedes is allergic we'll treat Sienna as if she is too.

Maria - the doc did say that we might get a false negative. It depends how much dairy protein she has been exposed to thru my breast milk, whether it's enough to raise her IgE levels. So if it's negative they want to retest in a few weeks.

I'm not anti dummies as such,more anti having to get up and put them back in half a dozen times a night, plus we're still trying to establish breastfeeding and I also worry about how we will get the dummies off them down the track.

But we had an OK night last night. Mercedes woke 3 hourly screaming inconsolably to be fed, and was quite difficult to feed as she was so distressed (even picking her up didn't help) and I woke Sienna to feed at the same time and after feed, wind and change they both went down awake (without the dummies) and went to sleep. So I did get a couple of blocks of 2 hours uninterrupted sleep, then they had their last night feed at 3am and slept until just after 7 which was good.

ETA: One bonus of going to hospital is that the cream they gave me for the girls bottoms is working wonders and the rash is clearing up.

Edited by Maya