Dermatologist visit

We took Noah to a Pediatric Dermatologist today. Our primary care finally referred us to her because we've made so many doctor trips due to Noah's excema related problems. It was wonderful. There is a reason there are specialists in the world. The doctor was awesome and explained everything in detail and provided rationale for everything we have to do. Awesome!

She said the excema is caused because Noah's skin lacks enough lipids to appropriately retain moisture. So basically, since we live in Southern CA, which is a desert, his skin is getting super dried out. Plus, he is probably allergic to something in the environment, most likely that we don't have control over, like pollen or dust, etc.

Here is our new regiment:
1. Luke warm bath every day
2. Non-soap soap, like Dove
3. Prescription Derma-Smooth, which is a medicated baby oil, which is supposed to lock the water into his skin to help with the dryness.
4. Perscription non-steroid ointment for his face.
5. Steroid ointment for his body
6. Vasaline or Aquaphor over his whole body
7. Antibiotic ointment into his nose and Grant and my noses to control for the bacterial infection.
8. Change detergents to ALL Free and Clear.

It seems like a lot, and we spent nearly the entire day in the doctors office, but I am so happy. I feel like for the first time we have a chance of possibly fixing his excema. It is encouraging. We have a check up with the dermatologist in two weeks, at which point she will re-evalute. One sad thing is that we might have to get rid of our cat, but she said that that depends on whether or not he responds to the rest of the treatment, so we'll see. But other than that, yay!

Making baby food

I made my first batch of homemade baby food today. Organic pears. I am so happy! I have been incredibly excited about making baby food for the longest time. I used the Beaba steamer/processor that Marmie gave us for Christmas. I am planning on making as much food as I can--hopefully everything except carrots (nitrates) and squash (don't have a good enough knife to cut through them). Anyway, I'm planning on doing frozen peas next.

Feeding Noah is my favorite activity. He loves everything, except he won't eat the cereals. I've tried mixing them with other things to mask the taste, but he is very particular. He will act as if I poisoned his bananas or carrots if I put even the tiniest amount of rice cereal into it and will refuse to eat it. I wish he would, though, so we could stop giving him the iron supplement. I tasted the iron supplement we have to give him and it tastes horrible! I gagged and need to chase it with juice. No wonder he hates it. I think that pretty soon I can introduce meat and that will help.

Back in action!

Little boy finished his antibiotics Saturday afternoon. Look at that adorable little face. All healed. He has a couple of places that look like little scars where the infection was the worse, but I'm hopeful that they will heal and go away eventually. Yay!

Grant and I shared baby duties this past week. We each did half-days. No point in messing this process up for 3 days of daycare. So Noah will go back for the first time in a while on Tuesday. I must say that Grant and I had a lot of fun staying home with Noah. He's been a lot of fun lately.

In other fun, non-health related updates....
1) Noah can officially sit up. I would say he started doing this consistently around 6-1/2 months. Right on time.

2) Noah can sleep without a swaddle! This is amazing to me. I never thought this day would come. The last 3 nights, he has slept the entire night without it. Everyone told me that the baby would let us know when he was ready to sleep unswaddled, but I didn't believe it. It was true, though! Three nights ago, he was screaming and wouldn't go to sleep. I took off his swaddle, just to readjust it, but in the process of me getting it ready, he promptly flipped to his belly and fell asleep. Just like that. I couldn't believe it, and we haven't gone back! Also, the head-scratching, eye-rubbing that he used to do has decreased dramatically. Amazing!

3) I think Noah is at the cusp of crawling. He's doing some rocking motions on his belly. He also does a lot of crawling/scootching motions, but I don't think he is strong enough to pull all of his weight--the curse of a big baby. Anyway, maybe I'm imagining, but I feel that it is coming.

I'm excited for life to be back to normal!

Hellish May

We have been battling a skin infection on Noah since the beginning of May. It has been thoroughly awful and I have spent everyday since it has started feeling like I am about to cry and/or be sick from worry. The following pictures occur over about 10 days. The infection got so bad, so fast. I haven't been able to post the pictures until now because I really couldn't bear seeing images of Noah looking like this without wanting to cry. He is now looking more like a regular baby again. We are still not out of the woods, though. He is on pretty harsh antibiotics and I am still constantly worried about how it is effecting his tummy, and whether they are really working. 

Saturday, May 2: Noah has a fever and we take him to urgent care. They say to watch him, but that it is probably just a virus. His face is perfect.

Wednesday, May 6: We take Noah to the doctor because he has several whitehead pimples on his face, in addition to his excema (the redness of his cheeks is typical of his excema flare-ups). He is put on Cephalexin antibiotic for impetigo.

Friday, May 8: It gets so much worse. So so so much worse. The infections spread up his face and around his lips and crust over. I call the doctor again and they say that it takes time for the antibiotic to kick in, but that he is clearly still contagious. We spend the next 3 days swaddling him and carrying him constantly to prevent him from touching his face. Noah is very brave and not nearly as fussy as one would expect. In the meantime, he passes the infection to me in the course of breast feeding. 

Tuesday, May 12: We go back to the doctor thinking the the infection is getting better, but she says it isn't responding as well as it should. She suspects he might have an MRSA strain of impetigo and switches his antibiotic to Bactrim. I also start taking Bactrim for my infection. Within 1 day he looks so much better. 

Wednesday, May 13: Noah breaks out into hives that night. We go to urgent care. He is allergic to Bactrim (sulfa antibiotics). Furthermore, so am I. His antibiotic gets switched to Clindamycin. 

We were supposed to leave for a week long trip to the midwest on Friday morning. I was supposed to be in my very good friend Kateri's wedding. We had been looking forward to this trip for half a year. I have to call and tell Kateri that I can't come, and she is wonderful about it. I think it is too risky, since if anything happens with this new antibiotic, we'll be in the airport. I am sick over all of this and really sad. 

Saturday, May 16: Noah is doing better. He still looks more or less like the last picture above. We have to give him 1 tsp (5 mls) of antibiotic three times a day. 1 tsp while cooking seems like nothing, but putting it into a babies mouth....it is a ton. It tastes awful (two different doctors warned us about that). Giving him the medicine is a two person job (me prying his little mouth open and Grant squirting it in, while he squirms and cries). We currently have 21 more times of doing it. It seems like an eternity. I'm still worried about it giving him diarrhea, which I know it inevitably will do, so I do a poop analysis after every diaper and we are tracking his wet diapers for signs of dehydration. I'm exhausted and praying that this antibiotic kills everything off and little boy can get better.

Poor, poor Noah

We took Noah back to the doctor today. He had these white-head pimples around his mouth, but not small little milia type pimples. These were big, teenage-going-through-puberty type pimples. It ended up that the excema on his face is infected. He has to go on oral and topical antibiotics. Poor kid.

Payback

Noah was entirely too easy during his first 6 months of life. Now, he is teaching us to not become complacent. The last two weeks, in particular, have been tough. He is still the darling, happy baby we are used to all day long. Then night comes and he becomes a little monster. The kid hates sleeping. I love sleeping, how can someone related to me hate sleeping so much?! The last few nights have involved inconsolable crying (either holding him, rocking him, and even occasionally when trying to nurse him) for hours. We think he is teething (which we are now blaming the fever from the weekend on), so I have been giving him a break because I know he might be uncomfortable. But during the day, he seems to be in a perfectly good mood, it's only at night that he freaks out, so I don't think it is only a physical thing.

One major issue we are having is with swaddling. Noah is still being swaddled at night. However, I am beginning to suspect that he doesn't like it. But he has such busy little hands, that if we try to let him sleep unswaddled, he will pull his hair and ears, rub his eyes, scratch his head, etc, etc, etc and is unable to fall asleep. Thus, we always end up putting the swaddle back on which, in turn leads to more screaming and crying. These behaviors only happen when he is tired, and I really don't know what to do. The other night I tried putting him to sleep on his belly (which currently is a big dogma no-no because of SIDS), but even then he couldn't fall asleep, and I gave up and resorted back to the swaddle. Another time, I tried putting socks on his hands (because the baby mittens are no match for his giant baby hands) and he ended up rubbing the sock across his mouth so much he rubbed his lips raw. It is really frustrating and I feel so bad for him and us. 

The other night I had had it. I wanted to just let him cry it out. Grant wouldn't let me. So now we are trying really hard to do the 'No Cry' sleep solution again, as one last effort before resorting to Ferber method. I am having my doubts about the 'No Cry' way of doing things, but I promised Grant to really try this one last time, and if it doesn't work, he promised to try the Ferber method with me. 

It's an ongoing battle and I am trying to maintain perspective about it all, as I know that this will eventually pass, but it is so so so so frustrating. 

No rest for the weary

My defense went well yesterday, so I am happy that it is finally done. I was really looking forward to relaxing this weekend, but that's not happening. Noah has a fever. I guess I should be glad it came on today and not before my defense. We took him to urgent care, and they said he didn't have an ear infection so to just keep watching him for the next 3 days. He is super fussy. I feel so bad for him. My plan of sleeping extra and watching TV isn't working out the way I envisioned. Ah, parenthood.