Doctors visits part 4

I was hoping to NOT have a "Part 4" but then Liam started running a high fever that wouldn't really come down with motrin or tylenol and he was completely miserable. Turns out my poor little one had strep throat! I have no idea how he contracted it, but we quickly got him on antibiotics to help fight it. After about 2.5 days, he's finally starting to act like himself again. Which is good, because I missed my happy boy!

Doctors visits part 2

Liam's 15 month well visit was today, even though he'll be 17 months old next week. Long story short, we had rescheduled and then canceled and then got sick and then the holiday's hit, so it completely slipped my mind to reschedule again.

We saw our backup doctor as our regular is out on leave. Liam is weighing in at 27.3lbs, he's 33 inches tall and according to his doctor, "he's too smart for his own good." Liam did pretty well, as long as he wasn't sitting on the exam table. I don't know what is was about that paper, but it completely freaked my poor baby out. The majority of his exam was done with Liam sitting in my lap. He ended up with 3 shots today, the final rounds of his HiV and Prevnar, along with his varicella. He did a good job with the shots, he did cry when getting them, but got over it pretty quickly and even gave his nurse a big hug before we left. 

He goes back in April for his 18 month well visit and if all goes well, he'll be seeing his regular doctor! We miss Sue very much and can't wait to see her again. Great doctors are hard to find and she's one of them.

Day 45 (2/14/11)

Happy Valentine's Day! As our super special Valentine's gift to Liam, we took him to the pediatrician for his 6m well baby visit. Thats right, shots! Our little monster is now weighing in at 21.9lbs and is 27in tall (although I feel that he's taller then that).

He's also starting to become much more mobile! He's not crawling yet, but he's rolling like crazy! He can get on his hands and knees and he also does a mean downward facing dog. I think we may have a future yogi on our hands!

Day 3 (1/3/11)

We're back from the doctors and the verdict is:

We passed!

No blood was found in his diaper, which means no additional testing needed! Hooray! While we were there, we decided to get his 5mo shots done rather then going back in 2 weeks. He took his shots like a champ, barely cried! I'm so proud of my big guy! Did I mention he's weighing in at 19lbs, 3oz? Yup, big guy is right!

Here's my happy boy earlier today:

Day 2 (1/2/11)

And we are up and running!

Li had his first boo-boo today :( He and M were checking out the other baby in the mirror when Liam decided he'd like to faceplant to his left. M was all set to catch him when he fell backwards, but I guess my sweet baby boy had other ideas. He ended up with a few little scratches on his noggin and a lot of tears, but he was okay.

Backstory time: Today's backstory is about our fight with allergies.

When Liam was about 5 weeks old, we noticed he was a completely different baby whenever I had anything with dairy. He spat up a ton, slept awful, had foul diapers, and ended up with eczema all over his body. We cut out all dairy from my diet and saw a major improvement, but we were then faced with "what can I eat now?"

We started using soy milk for cooking/baking and we slowly found alternates for snacks and meals. Then, we realized he started reacting again. This time we cut out eggs, peanuts and treenuts. Once more, he went back to the happy baby.

During the times when we were figuring out his allergies, we noticed some specks of what we thought was blood in his diapers. We brought it up to his pedi (whom we LOVE, if you need a recommendation and are in my area, just ask) and she tested his stool and confirmed it was blood. From that point on, she's tested his diaper and its been positive for specks of blood every time.

After the initial test, we met with my allergist (again, LOVE him) and cut out soy as well. Did you know 80% of infants with dairy intolerance's also have a soy intolerance? From that point on, we had only seen blood once in his diaper and we (us and the pedi) think it was due to a fissure.

End backstory.

Tonight we are going back to the pedi to have another diaper checked and have blood drawn for an allergy test. She fears that if he's still bleeding even teeny tiny amounts, he'll become anemic. If the diaper tests positive, she wants us to do a 2 week trial with formula. If its negative, we keep doing what we've been doing. Fingers crossed its negative. I'm super anti-formula for me/Liam. I have zero opinions on others using formula, everyone has their reasoning and I respect that, but for me its just not for us. If the diaper tests positive, I'm going to see what else we can do besides formula, maybe cutting something else out of my diet. As of right now, we are dairy, soy, egg, peanut, treenut, fish, shellfish and beef free. Yup, that's right. 7 out of 8 major allergens, plus an additional one just for fun. I have to say though, this is probably the best diet I've ever been on. I've lost all the baby weight plus another 10lbs. I guess that's the positive out of all of this.

I'll update after our appt. Wish us luck!