8 Week-Old Autumn Needs Your Help!

[charismom]

I would love some help and encouragement about my 8 weeks old EBF daughter. She started getting fussy and having green poop when she was 2 weeks old. She was crying, choking, and popping on and off the breast, so I realized I have a overactive letdown, and wondered if I had an oversupply of milk. I started block feeding and have continued with it, but things just snowballed from there and by 5 weeks old the poop was always green and mucusy and the crying was getting intense. At 6 weeks she got a stuffy nose, and I went on a TED hoping to avoid the colic we seemed to be headed for. After 7 full days the poop became fairly consistently yellow. I’m now on day 18 of an ED but the mucus is persistent and she seems to be getting fussier again. She also is spitting up more and more and showing other signs of GERD. Her brother had GERD when he was younger and is allergic to dairy & eggs and intolerant of bananas. He is also still BF, so I haven’t had any dairy or eggs ever since DD was conceived.

So, my question is: Where do I go from here. Her doc is family practice and way out of her depth, my son’s doc is a pedi but likely to just dismiss all this. I have been eating oatmeal, sunflower seeds, and white potatoes, and I see on this forum that I should cut them out. The problem is that there is so little that I’m eating, sleep is not at all good, and I have to keep up with my 3 year old.

Thanks for reading all this. Any help would be appreciated.

[WaitingForKiddos]

I'd call a local midwife and ask her for a lactation consultation referral. From there I'd bet you can get the name of a bf'ing friendly ped for a workup.

Hows her weight gain? Could she just be a mucus pooper? How long are your blocks of feeding? Maybe increase it? Is her spit up projecting out?

[changingseasons]

Can you try switching out some of the foods on your TED? You definitely need more food than that, nursing 2 children!! 18 days is way too long to be on that restrictive of a diet. That's great that you're seeing improvements, but if you've gotten all the food triggers out she should be significantly cleared up in less than a week.

I would switch to another gf grain like rice, buckwheat, quinoa, or millet. Oatmeal is often contaminated with gluten AND it will increase your milk supply. I would switch out the white potatoes with something else starchy and filling, like maybe winter squash? Zucchini is also a pretty benign veggie. Actually, most veggies are usually tolerated on an elimination diet (except peas/beans/legume family.) And you definitely need some fats in your diet to keep yourself healthy. Olive, safflower, and canola are good ones to try- add them to everything! Do you eat meat? Grassfed lamb is a good one to try, but a lot of kids tolerate chicken or turkey during a TED.

Are you keeping a food journal? Another thing to try is rotating food. That, with the food journal, sometimes makes it easier to spot patterns with symptoms. Doesn't have to be a strict rotation, just don't eat the same thing every day. So try rice, zucchini, chicken, olive oil and eat that for a few days. Then switch to buckwheat, turkey, broccoli, safflower oil. Then quinoa, lamb, carrots, canola. That way, if symptoms get better or worse during one of those chunks of time, you only have to narrow it down to those 4 (or more) foods.

Another thing to try is a good dairy-free probiotic. Kirkman Labs makes an infant strain that is dairy free (you have to order it online.)

eta: Oh yeah- and welcome to MDC!!

[elanorh]

I second the probiotic recommendation - for you as well as your dd.

So is your diet consisting entirely of just potatoes, sunflower seeds, and oatmeal? Or are there other things you're eating in your TED?

[charismom]

[Hows her weight gain? Could she just be a mucus pooper? How long are your blocks of feeding? Maybe increase it? Is her spit up projecting out?[/QUOTE]

She hasn't been weighed since her 2 week appointment. She was gaining well then. I think she looks like she's still gaining well; my mom's not so sure.

What's a mucus pooper? Could it be OK that her diapers are mucusy? I had just assumed it meant something bad.

My blocks of feeding are usually 2 feeds, and she eats about every 2 hours, so I guess about 4 hours.

The spit up is not projecting out (thank goodness), but it often makes her cry. She needs to be upright and cries if she's not. She often spits up several times a feeding despite being burped and I can often see her ruminating after she's done eating.

[charismom]

Originally Posted by elanorh

I second the probiotic recommendation - for you as well as your dd.

So is your diet consisting entirely of just potatoes, sunflower seeds, and oatmeal? Or are there other things you're eating in your TED?

I will definitely try the probiotic. I've just been scared to try one not knowing if it has dairy. Thanks for the recommendation!

I started just eating turkey, pears, rice, squash, sweet potatoes, and white potatoes. After three days I was feeling terrible and realized there was no fat in there, so I added sunflower seeds. Then I added cantaloupe, honey, grapes, raisins, apples, carrots, green beans, oatmeal, rice milk, rice pasta. I made pancakes out of rice flour, baking powder, vanilla, white sugar, salt, canola oil. That's basically what I've been eating for almost three weeks.

Last Saturday I tried wheat again and ate a sandwich. She was miserable at the very next feeding, all evening, slept very poorly for a few nights, and was fussy the following days. She started feeling better on Wednesday.

She had a remarkably good day yesterday. No mucus that I could tell, nice yellow poops. A normal amount of fuss for her age, except the reflux symptoms which were quite apparent.

I plan to make an appointment with the pedi today. It's a 45 minute drive, but even if he's not helpful in other ways, I think he will prescribe something for the reflux.

I'm interested in the rotation diet. Is that a better course of action right now than trying a new potential allergen? I was considering trying corn, since corn bread would be a welcome addition to my diet.

Thanks for reading! I can't tell you how much better it makes me feel just to know someone else is listening!

[mamafish9]

Originally Posted by charismom

I started just eating turkey, pears, rice, squash, sweet potatoes, and white potatoes. After three days I was feeling terrible and realized there was no fat in there, so I added sunflower seeds. Then I added cantaloupe, honey, grapes, raisins, apples, carrots, green beans, oatmeal, rice milk, rice pasta. I made pancakes out of rice flour, baking powder, vanilla, white sugar, salt, canola oil. That's basically what I've been eating for almost three weeks.

If gluten is bothering her, then unless you have gluten-free oats, those are usually cross-contaminated with gluten. And plenty of kids can't do oats, even GF - so I'd take those out for now.

Baking powder, unless you make your own replacement, has corn starch. Vanilla is usually in a corn alcohol base. Rice milk often has corn derived ingredients.

Potatoes and apples are fairly common allergens, so you could try taking those out.

Both you and she need a lot more fat than just sunflower seeds - try avocado, olive oil, salmon...

Are you taking any supps? If you post a link to them, we can help you look at ingredients.

And to repeat CS's great advice - make a change, and if you don't see significant improvement in a week, try something else - that's long enough to see a change.