Failure to Thrive

What horrible words.

Either way – someone is failing, be it the baby who is not gaining enough weight or the mommy in doing her job. I felt punched in the stomach when i saw the words on the doctor’s discharge papers from Kendall’s well child check on Monday. Even though i  have known they were coming, even though I thought i was prepared for it, it still hit me like  a ton of bricks. Because I do feel like a failure. For three other humans i was able to be all the nourishment they needed. In some miraculous way designed only by God, my body was capable of creating the best possible source of nutrients and food for my babies, and they ate it, and they thrived. i mean look at kaylen! you would never have known she was a 6 lb peanut too! I am afraid kaylen had like the opposite of failure to thrive – “thrives too much”. (that sounds like a native american name ….i digress).

So – that kinda sucked.

Now I get to eliminate all obvious and hidden sources of dairy from my diet, including poultry and beef products. Apparently nothing that has touched or come from a chicken or cow. Old macdonald will not be happy – I am cutting into his profits. This leaves me with the oh-so-grody protein options of lamb or turkey. I have never in my life eaten a lamb (and no gyros do not count), and i detest turkey. No more DD coffee with extra/extra, no more coke for a while, no cereal. Now one would think the pounds would just be melting off of me with this restricted diet, but one would be wrong. I can’t win for tryin’!

the most frustrating part of all of this is that it doesn’t seem to be helping.

She has been puking some of her most violent pukes ever since we came home from the doctor’s, including a horrific one AT the doctor’s office. I can just tell its taking so much out of her. It breaks my heart to change her diapers or her clothes because she is just so scrawny and chicken-leg-ish. i see babies on “Baby Story” who are all cute and pudgy and happy and i am jealous. I just want my baby to not be in pain. I can deal with the sleeplessness, i can deal with the three hour long crying jags in the evening when nothing makes her happy, I can deal with the almost non-stop nursing when she’s having a rough day. but I cannot deal with the look of pain that is almost always there in her eyes.

So i guess the doctor is right – this isn’t thriving. it’s barely even surviving.

I will continue to hold my hands over her little bloated belly and pray that God will reach down and touch her, heal her from this pain somehow. Give the doctors the wisdom to start figuring out what the problem is, not just fixing symptoms on a temporary basis. And please please let her gain a couple ounces this week.

Hopefully we know more in a couple weeks. Until then we just pray. And try to shove as many calories into her each day as we can!

t