For the past week or so, Caleb has been overly fussy/crying for reasons we couldn’t figure out. Finally we set up an appointment with the doctor this morning to find out what was wrong. Andy and I were pretty sure it was some sort of reflux based on his symptoms. After a round of questions, the doctor gave us two gameplans.

1) His discomfort may be caused by a food allergy. This makes sense with Andy’s family history of allergies.
Plan of action: Since I’m exclusively breastfeeding, the allergy would be in my milk. I will have to clear any problem foods out of my system which takes three days. In the meantime, I will have to pump and dump, eat no high allergy foods, (this includes dairy, soy, shellfish, nuts, wheat and eggs) and feed Caleb a hypoallergenic formula for 3 days. If this is indeed the culprit, we should have a less fussy baby by the end of today. After the three days, I will start introducing back the high allergy foods one by one so I don’t starve to death, because, really, who can survive on a diet like that?

2) He does have reflux, poor thing.
Plan of action: Zantac. The doctor already wrote us out a prescription for the medicine. So if the allergy test fails, we’ll have that to try.

As of this afternoon, Caleb seems to hate the bottle with a passion. I don’t blame him. I took one whiff of that formula and almost gagged myself. So basically he hasn’t eaten in five hours. I’ve resolved that if he doesn’t take it again when he wakes up, I’m going to nix the formula and deal with a fussy baby until all the offensive foods clear my system.

In other news, they did a weight check at the office and Caleb gained nine ounces in four days! He’s on his way to becoming a little sumo wrestler.

I’ll try to keep everyone updated on this little project and hopefully have a good outcome.