Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Baby update

Well, we took Sedona back to the pediatrician yesterday. This time we saw our doctor (the last time we took her in we saw someone else b/c our doctor was out of town). That doctor needed me to explain normal breastfed infant stools, foremilk/hindmilk imbalance, etc... and told us to just wait and see what happens. Our doctor (whom I adore) didn't need us to explain anything to him (gee, imagine that). We described the yucky stools, the food diary, the bleeding and all that. We told him we wanted allergy testing done. He told us she may have a food allergy and he's willing to do RAST testing, but since that requires a fair amount of blood (ever held your baby down while they find a vein? I have...not fun), he wanted to do a stool culture first. He seemed a tad surprised the other doctor didn't do one a week and a half ago. He suspects she has a shigella or salmonella infection and is just handling it well since she's exclusively breastfed. The food sensitivity may be the cause of all this, or it may just be a secondary reaction due to having an already irritated gut. Even most adults have fever, vomiting, dehydration and all that with salmonella and shigella is dysentery (well, there's more mild forms of shigella, but dysentery is one form of it)---if that is what is wrong with her, all I can say is "way to go momma milk". If the culture comes back positive she will need to go on some pretty heavy duty antibiotics to wipe it out (due to her age and the possibility of it becoming a systemic infection, they don't take chances, they go straight to the "big guns"). If the culture comes back negative, we will do allergy testing along with a CBC. We asked about mold being the root of the problem (mainly in regards to the stuff nose she's always had that's improved lately) and he said nothing that's going on with her has anything to do with mold. He says she is too young to have a cell-mediated response like that, and even if that was going on, her mucous membranes would be palid and she would have wheezing, etc...

Even though it sounds bad (and the antibiotics would definitely suck), an infection would be the easy, shorter-term problem answer. The creepy thing is who knows where she picked it up. She's never had anything to eat, so it could've been anywhere. My first guess would be a child at Sierra's school (or even Sierra herself) carrying a low level infection, not washing hands well after going to the bathroom and then touching Sedona's hands. I always tell kids to only touch her feet, but sometimes they've reached out before I can stop them. And that child ALWAYS has her hands in her mouth, so anything that got on her hands was sure to make it to her gut.

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