Infant Reflux and an Outing

Many of you know that Zoe suffers from infant reflux. This means that she is basically uncomfortable a lot of the time and cries inconsolably when she feeds, burps, hiccups and spits up. She also wakes up from an otherwise peaceful sleep because the acid burns her throat and causes her to cry. On top of that, she cries when she's just hanging around, too, as sometimes those things happen when she is otherwise calm. Besides sleep deprivation, this has been the hardest part about being a new mom. It's difficult to see her grimace when she has a reflux episode, and hear her cry intensely and not be able to do anything to help her. For the past two weeks I have been on an elimination diet to see if something I'm eating is making Zoe's issues worse. She has steadily improved, and though she still deals with reflux stuff, she is nowhere near the freaky (i.e. freaking out) baby she was a few weeks ago. I have yet to determine the cause, but will be bringing foods back into my diet slowly this week. We're in for a brutal week, i'm sure, but it will help to know what is making things worse.

Because of the reflux, her meltdowns are unpredictable. As a result, I have been more hesitant than I would otherwise be, to take Zoe out in public by myself. We've visited friends houses and the doctor's office, but usually I only go out when Uche's home to watch her, and have yet to take her with me to run errands or anything like that. Well, after talking to a wise friend, who also had a baby with reflux, I've decided that I cannot let reflux run my life and that I just need to suck it up, be brave, and venture out into the land of the living. This is stressful to think about sometimes, as she can go from sweet and peaceful to unbelievably irritable in an instant. Still, though reflux is something she will grow out of, I can't simply be imprisoned in this apartment until she does! So that brings us to our first outing to the Christian bookstore the other day. Zoe did great! Even though she didn't sleep, she hung out in her stroller and looked around, contently. She began a mini-meltdown right as we were leaving, and had it out in the car, instead of in the store. I was pleased. :) It gave me enough courage to take her grocery shopping at Target the next day. So we are making progress...I know the public meltdown is inevitable, and that I'll just need to learn how to deal with it, but it was nice to have these first two outings go so smoothly. I think God knew I needed that bit of grace in order to muster up some courage to do it again. We are getting there...