My Sweet Baby

I don't think there is anything worse than having a sick baby.

The last few weeks have been rough. Chloe (8 months old now) has been crying a lot and is having such a hard time sleeping. She wakes up on average about 6-7 times a night. Each time she wakes up I have to nurse her to  calm her down and she almost always cries like she's in pain and can't go back to sleep for a while. She also does this during the day. She is playing one second, happy, giggling...then she arches her back out and cries and is sooo angry. If you try to touch her face or give her a pacifier she swats your hand away and cries harder. She seems to frustrated. It just didn't make sense to me. She's typically such a sweet and happy baby.

Earlier this week she was just having an extra rough couple of days. At one point she had huge crocodile tears running down her face. She's also teething so for a while we attributed her crankiness to that. It took forever but she finally had 2 little teeth on the front bottom pop through. I quickly figured out it wasn't her teeth since baby tylenol or baby orajel didn't seem to be bringing her any relief. I had my husband call our pediatrician and they suggested we bring her in to check for an ear infection.

At every appointment they routinely weigh the babies. Chloe was 16.4 pounds at 6 months. When I put her on the scale this time it read 16.5 pounds. She hadn't gained anything for 2 months...That's obviously a huge concern. She also only grew a 1/4 of an inch. She's always been short but she dropped from the 27th to the 17th percentile. For weight she dropped from the 57th to the 23rd percentile. It's such a huge change for a little baby. The hardest thing to believe about her lack of weight gain is how much she eats. She's still exclusively breastfed and eats at least every few hours and gets fruits, veggies, and grains on a regular basis. She's smart enough to know that when she sees us eating that it's dinner time for her too.

The doctor ordered some lab work for Chloe to see if there was anything in her blood that could tell us about her weight. Her physical exam of her was normal... no ear infection, lungs are clear, tummy sounded good, etc. Therefore it had to be something organic.

Getting Chloe's blood was awful.

They started with the heel and squeezed so hard it bruised instantly. They needed 5 vials of her blood and hadn't even filled 1 yet. They had to get another person with more experience to help since Chloe was so little. They didn't like the look of her veins so they did a finger prick. It took 45 minutes to get those 5 vials. She screamed and cried the whole time and said mama a few times. Such a sweet baby.

Since they had such a hard time getting the blood they noted in the lab results that the results might come back skewed. Her potassium levels came back weird. Her thyroid function was .34, just slightly abnormal. At this point the doctor wanted to redo the blood work but she felt the results pointed to hyperthyroidism and/or acidosis.

We got more blood drawn the next day. It didn't take as long but of course she still cried the whole time. She was happier to begin with so it wasn't as bad for her. You can just see the pain and confusion on her face.

The potassium levels came back normal this time, but the thyroid levels have gotten worse and they now point to hypothyroidism. The problem with this is that it doesn't explain Chloe's weight.

Our doctor called an endocrinologist in Iowa City and she asked for a third round of blood tests. She has been very helpful to our doctor and they have been bouncing ideas off of each other. Yesterday we took blood out of Chloe for the third time. She did so good. I got her to play a little with things like keys and a hand warmer. Not your typical baby toys but they kept her from thinking about the pain.

The rest of the results haven't come back yet. Our doctor feels it's best for us to go see that specialist. They have everything a baby would need in one place.

We will know for sure if it's a thyroid problem then. We go Tuesday.

I think the not knowing is the worst of it all. I just need to know what's going on with my little munchkin and how we can make her feel better.

We will probably need to have an MRI done as well. The poor thing will need to be sedated for that since she has to stay still for so long. With the MRI they will be looking for abnormalities like a mass.

It's been such a long week. So many things going on. My birthday is this coming Friday and we were going to have a poker party but I'm cancelling it. It just seems weird to be celebrating when I still don't know what's wrong with my baby. And honestly I'm just tired. the lack of sleep is really affecting the both of us. My husband is so sweet and helps me with Chloe at nights and then he has to work all day. We both just need lots more sleep!

Well speaking of sleep, Chloe is finally asleep in my arms and is cuddling. Such a sweetheart. We both love her so much and hope she's going to be ok.

This is the 2nd time they took blood from her. Poor baby.

She was happy and giggly right before they took blood out for the 3rd time.

As you can see she's got some healthy rolls and it's hard to believe she's not gaining weight.