A Journey In Hope: Speed Bumps

Despite the fact that every time we walk into a room with Mr. Boy, people say, "He's getting so big!" He is not. :( In August he weighed in at 17 lbs, just finally making it onto the chart for weight and Thursday, 3 months later, he weighed in at 16 lbs 10 oz. As our Gastrointestinal Dr put it, babies aren't ever supposed to lose weight. She said that if Mr. Boy continues to lose weight, they will have to put him in the hospital to figure out what's wrong. Well it didn't take a hospital stay to figure out what was up... I figured it out at 10pm saturday night as I read over the fine details of Mr. Boy's formula recipe. In September we switched formulas and they increased his caloric intake. They gave me a new recipe for mixing his formula with water and it didn't specify wether we pack the powder into the measuring cup or just scoop it in. All our other formulas specifically called for "unpacked" measurements. Because Mr. Boy's weight was down on Thursday, they gave me a new recipe for an even higher calorie mixture, and this time it called for "packed" measurements. I realized then that we were supposed to be packing the powder in all along with this new formula and so David and I did a test to see how much of a difference it would make, and it was a whole 1/4 cup difference and when you usually mix in one cup, a 1/4 cup makes a HUGE difference. So we'd basically been starving Mr. Boy. He wasn't getting enough calories.

At midnight that night, as I was trying to sleep, I realized that this was probably also the reason why Mr. Boy stopped vomiting. I laid there and cried as the realization hit hard. We were watering down his formula, so the vomiting got better and stopped altogether. We decided to not use the new higher calorie recipe and to simply mix Mr. Boy's old recipe the right way for the first time and see how he did the rest of the weekend. The vomiting returned and he showed signs he was suffering from reflux pains several times a day. I talked to the GI Dr Monday morning and she decided that we better go back to watering it down and slowly, slowly add more and more powder over weeks to try and get him up to the proper amount without him vomiting.

We are wishing he never got "better" in the first place. It's much harder to think you see the light at the end of the tunnel and then have that light snuffed out. Back to square one.

Through all this, God is still good. We still have hope and faith in His healing power. And we know God has a special plan for Mr. Boy.