Hello my lovely’s
I thought I would start back with a post about Alfie’s allergies and the misery and heartache that comes with an undiagnosed allergy baby.
When I first had Alfie he was AMAZING that first two weeks was bliss. He took to breastfeeding amazingly (after having tongue tie cut), it was nothing like when I fed Emily. He slept so well. So much so that we had to go back up to the hospital as they were worried about how much he was sleeping (they then decided he was just a sleepy baby). After that honeymoon period he just cried 24/7. He wouldn’t be as bad when I was sat on the birth ball bouncing cuddling him upright to music. But any other time well, it was kind of hell. It took 12 weeks to start getting Alfie’s allergies under control this helped but not completely. Little did we know how many were going to pop up when we started weening! Everyday when I was putting Emily down for a nap at 11am I would put him in the Moses basket with white noise on the telly so I could make it really loud. I would then have the iPad on noise for Emily and I would cry to Emily I’m sorry, I was sorry that he came in and disturbed our time, I’m sorry I couldn’t play like we used to, I’m sorry this noisy little thing never stopped crying. I loved him but I also didn’t want to be around him. I really didn’t want to ‘put him on anyone’ either.
I had always gone to langue and play with Emily on a Thursday morning. Emily loved it and called it Hayley’s school (the leader of the groups name and it was in a school hall). After Alfie was born it was harder to take her but we always went Hayley and Emma would help me with Alfie so I could get time back with Emily. Other days my mum and dad would have him for the morning and I remember one morning when I knew my dad was coming to pick us up, I just broke down crying, Hayley knew straight away what it was and I think a lot of people saw it coming. My health visitor wasn't around as she was off sick so I literally had no medical person who would listen to me about how bad he was to be around. Their was a lady who we saw for his weight and eventually it wasn't going up as it should and we got referred to the hospital. But that wasn’t the end of it. We had an urgent referral that only took 3 days! The relief that we were going to see doctors who were going to help us was amazing.
Our appointment couldn’t of gone better. The doctor took down all of the symptoms Alfie was expecting, green explosive mucusy (sometimes bloody) poo, constant screaming, poor weight gain. He measured him and checked him over. Said plan of action would be a week lacto free milk. Then if that didn’t help we would try dairy free for a few weeks. We were going to do blood tests to see if there was anything else that could be causing him pain or problems.
We were told to give it 2 days and they would get back to us with the plan in place and where to go to pick up the prescription milk.
We left the appointment ecstatic so happy and excited of the proposed plan. On the third day I still hadn’t received a phone call so I called them.
‘Oh hi Mrs Jones, we have decided to leave Alfie for a little while to see how he goes. Call us back if he drops below the bottom centile and we will have another look’.
Shattered, all that positivity, the optimism that we were getting answers gone. I felt like a lorry had just hit me. There was no way I was laying back and doing nothing. I had already started to cut out dairy incase that was the issue ready for stage two of our plan. And I was going to stick to it. I wasn’t just going to stick to it for the few weeks that they had said I knew I needed to do something to help him, to make him stop crying and just be a happy baby.
I will do more posts about going dairy free and weaning an allergy baby but for now I’ll end with some photos of Alfie as a baby and one of him now ☺️
