Cranky

Since Ethan has been born, he has been such a calm and quiet kid. Only fussing when he is wet or hungry. The last few days have been a whole different experience. Starting on Sunday, Ethan started spitting up and not just spitting up, but projectile spitting up. And he started to get increasingly cranky and fussy.

Needless to say, since Sunday I haven't slept more than 4 hours in a night, and that is usually split up into a maximum of 2 hours at a time.

Last night, I started to think that maybe Ethan was just colicky. His longest time of fussing was yesterday which started at 1pm and didn't end until 1am. I had decided after reading online, that I should schedule an appointment in case it is something else. So, this morning I called the pediatrician's office at 7:30 and scheduled Ethan for an appointment at 9:20am.

We got to the doctor's office at 8:40am as I was hoping to see the doctor earlier than our scheduled appointment time since I had a doctor's appointment following Ethan's and didn't want to be late. We ended up being seen at 8:50am and out of the office by 9:10am.

Here is what we found out:

All the worrying about Ethan not being able to leave the NICU due to his lack of appetite seems so silly now, as he has now almost gained 50% of his birth weight. Since he was first seen in the doctor's office on 4/13 weighing 6lb 15 oz and height at 20.5 in. Now on 5/4 he is weighing 9lb 6 oz and height is 22 in.

In comparing his birth weight and height (6lb 11 oz and 19 3/4in). This put Ethan in the 50th percentile for height and between 10 and 25th percentile for weight. Now at just a few days older than 1 month, Ethan is between 25 and 50th percentile for height and still in the 10 to 25th percentile for weight.

Now to address the issues that we were there for:

Ethan is having issues processing his formula. The doctor believes that he may have colic. We will try a few things the doctor had recommended to see if it will make things better for Ethan (and us). The doctor also believes that Ethan is lactose intolerant. What this means, is that we will now be switching his formula and hoping this will help to make Ethan feel better. He hasn't had a rash at all, but he is currently very gassy and he isn't able to deal with all the excess gas. This in turn has been making him cranky (which is completely understandable).

Ethan is back at the doctor next week for his 1 month check up and vaccines. So we will see how the new formula does and if we need to do anything else.