I asked my friend and new Mama Megan to write a post for me on her experience with a super fussy newborn. It’s not something we went through but I know some of you may have similar experiences and I asked Megan to talk about what she learned and what worked for them:
“Sleepless nights, Projectile vomiting, gassy crying baby and crying mama.. yayyy newborns!! I was sure something was wrong with her. How could one baby cry so much and be so gassy. I searched for hours and read through mom blog after mom blog and article after article online praying for an answer. I kept coming across this whole dairy intolerant/dairy free thing. I convinced myself that dairy was the route of all evil (and yet all holy bc, cheese). I spoke w our pediatrician at one of her appointments and she told me that nothing was wrong w my baby, everything she’s doing is normal. All the grunting, gassiness, throwing up, crying, both her and me, all normal. She did say that while she may have a touch of reflex, that she was a “happy spitter”. Apparently there are happy spitters and sad spitters. Happy spitters vomit, but are not upset by it. They are still gaining weight. They are still thriving. Then there’s the sad spitters. They are upset after vomiting. They have kind of a sour smell to them/their vomit. They are losing or not gaining weight. They are not thriving. While my LO wasn’t losing weight, she was projectile vomiting almost everything she would eat. She was not happy afterwards, to my standards, and she had the sour smell. Luckily, we are fortunate enough to have a doctor in the family. Instead of going back to our ped, we just went through our family member who agreed that reflux meds were not a bad idea and the Zantac wouldn’t hurt her if she wasn’t truly a reflux baby. Regardless of what you think about going through our fam instead of the pediatrician, since starting her on the Zantac she has not projectile vomited once, nor does she have that sour smell anymore. That’s a win in our book. “Happy spitter” my a**!
Now back to the dairy free (DF) thing. Again, I was convinced this was also her issue. I stopped eating dairy the dairy I knew about, cheeses and milks. But, there are so many “hidden” dairy ingredients you have to look out for and they are everywhere. I basically felt like I couldn’t eat anything and it was extremely depressing. The chiropractor we take my LO too ( because there’s a lot of good benefits there too) knows a ton about the whole DF thing and was convinced she had some kind of intolerance and was guiding me on things to do to help her. Cut dairy out, start a probiotic, keep a food log etc. I tried being DF as best I could but again there are hidden dairy ingredients in so many things that I was never truly dairy free. I kept torturing myself with it, though, until my LO’s next appointment at the Peds. This was her one month appointment. I talked to her doctor again about the whole DF thing and she literally begged me to stop torturing myself with it. She said, “pleaseeee, stop doing that. I do this every single day for lots of years, your baby is normal. If she is not normal I would tell you and if she changes you will tell me and we will go from there but everything now is normal newborn stuff”. And that was the end of my DF days. For now. The ped said that everything she was doing was just because she was so young. Newborn’s digestive tracts have to get use to the outside world because on the inside they didn’t have to process food like they do now, along with everything else they have to get use to.
I also know that some parents have had to chat with their peds several times to convince them to do further testing bc they know their babe is DF but because she didn’t have all of the usually signs of DF beyond throwing up( which got better with the Zantac and fussiness-which is just a baby thing) so I felt confident in following the, stop torturing yourself, advice.” – Megan
“If you do go down the dairy free route, Oreos were a gift from Heaven and how I didn’t completely go off the deep end with my depression from missing cheese”
Keep Doing What Works 