Emmett's Insides, Part II

Remember two years ago when I wrote about our adventures with the pediatrician and Rolin's cow's milk protein allergy?

It's Emmett this time. He has it too.

His is worse, though. Rolin's didn't show up until he was about four months old (that and we didn't know any better).

Almost one month to the day after Emmett was born, his beautiful, seedy, mustard yellow, perfect-looking breast-fed-baby poop turned dark green.

I hoped and prayed it was simply an imbalance in foremilk/hindmilk, though I knew that wasn't going to be the case. He was a champion eater.

He pooped frequently and most of them were mucusy. As predicted, a stool sample left at the doctor's office came back positive for blood.

So I cut dairy out of my diet.

Green, blood and mucus continued so we tried eliminating dairy and soy. I told the doctor that eggs upset my stomach sometimes, so she suggested taking it easy on eggs. I also told her I ate peanut butter every day, so she suggested trying almond butter instead. She also mentioned corn is becoming more of an issue with babies.

After two weeks of no dairy, soy, eggs, corn, peanuts or coconut (my own hunch), diapers started turning yellow again. Hallelujah!

The celebration was short-lived. I introduced some of those items, all except dairy and soy, back to my diet, and the nasty green poo returned.

So I cut them all again. It didn't work this time. Except for three random days after Thanksgiving when he had beautiful, seedy, mustard yellow, perfect-looking breast-fed-baby poop again. The only thing I had done differently leading up to that time was I had no wine or beer.

I also started being suspicious of strawberries, tomatoes, grapes...

Dairy and soy are in a lot of food (there is soy in the gum brand we chew), but corn is in everything, guys. Corn syrup, cornstarch, corn oil...did you realize baking powder is cornstarch?

All this nonsense was driving me insane. Not only was I hungry all the time, my physical and mental health were starting to take a turn. Crazy diets can mess with your flora, man!

Changing Emmett's diapers filled me with dread. Sometimes I would tell myself the poop looked yellow, only to have my balloon of hope popped when I'd ask Rolin what color it was and he'd say, "green!"

Two-year-olds don't lie when it comes to color-coding poop.

Some days were filled with tears which welled up out of frustration, confusion, obsession, terror, anger, doubt, feelings of failure/poor parenting, empty hope...

Overall, Emmett is a growing, thriving baby. His reactions could be worse (Google image search it, if ye doubt the claim). He only had a couple eczema spots (Rolin had many) and he was generally happy (but boy, can he scream). His spit up was never projectile, though there was quite a bit of it.

We made several trips to the doctor, who had a child of her own with cow's milk, soy and corn allergies, so I trust her assessment in this situation. She said she would support me continuing to breast feed or to move to formula. That may make a sane person feel better, but it was around Christmas time my mama heart could take no more of the nasty poops. I was fearful, nervous, obsessive, getting more gray hair and, most of all, joyless.

This situation was robbing me of my ability to experience and appreciate the joy surrounding me: my two beautiful, smart, growing, curious, amazing boys. I would have to almost daily look in the mirror and tell myself to snap out of the funk I was in; to put on a smile and go be silly with my 2-year-old; to believe Emmett was going to be ok and go scoop him up and kiss him all over because he is mine and I can, and should, do that instead of being afraid to love him wholeheartedly because I was terrified I was slowly killing him. I've been in a bad place. The past five months had flown by and all I can really remember about them is green poop. That's no way to live life.

Two weeks ago, after he had about nine water-like green poos in one day, followed by a day of bloody poo, I knew it was time to do formula.

Another reason I was dreading formula was because the transition with Rolin was awful. Rolin thought we were trying to kill him. Joe and Brianna were visiting that weekend and can attest to the terribleness of it. We tried sippy cups, spoons, syringes, real cups, several different brands of bottles...he simply would not drink it, not to mention I became super engorged and uncomfortable for about two weeks. But, in the end, Rolin drank it and my boobs recovered. All was fine; Rolin was even allergy-free by 15-months-old.

Emmett is now on Alimentum, the liquid kind because that's the only corn-free formula. His poops look a lot better now, which is the overall goal. He fussed a little at the first bottle and denied the second bottle until it was mixed with breast milk. By the forth bottle he was flapping his arms in hungry excitement at the sight of a bottle of straight formula; he hasn't given breast milk a second thought since. Whaaaat??

Yep, he hardly batted an eye. Weaning has been a lot easier on me this time too, which is a huge relief. Now I just need to come up with $11 extra a day for the next six months to feed the kid (insurance denied our request because Emmett is gaining weight. Another story for another time).

I could go on about this -- it was for five months, after all -- but I'll stop here. Many of my acquaintances and relations are tired of hearing about this, I'm sure, but I thank them for their listening, patience and support!!

From November -- already two months ago! 

Embracing the moment. Picture taken at post time.

Emmett's Insides, Part I

I expected things to be fine at my 36-week ultrasound, as they had been in previous ultrasounds. There is, of course, always a little bit of anxiety leading up to ultrasounds, but I was more looking forward to getting a new picture of the little baby.

After the tech finished the ultrasound, I was moved to the exam room to wait for a midwife. As we wrapped up our discussion "normal" pregnancy ailments, such as extremely achy hips, she said something along the lines of, "So we picked up a little issue with baby's kidneys on this ultrasound. It's probably no big deal, it's called dilated renal arteries, but you'll need to go have another ultrasound at the perinatologist's office where they'll take a better look."

"Huh? What now," I asked, totally thrown off by this information.

"Things are measuring a bit larger than normal. Probably no big deal, but we have to take another look," she replied. "Especially because this didn't show up on the 20-week ultrasound."

I did a bit of light Googling and asked other medically inclined friends for information, but neither source had much insight. I even called to make sure I had the right description of the issue. They repeated the same information, calling it dilated renal arteries.

After our appointment with the perinatologist, the doctor present told us the issue was more accurately called "dilatated renal pelvis," a condition I HAD come across in my Googling.

Essentially, one of the baby's kidneys was measuring larger than it should, indicating it was retaining urine. This could be due to several reasons: a pinched ureter, a blockage, a faulty valve in the bladder or kidney, lack of gravity assisting the urine's escape from kidney to bladder.

The retention wasn't significant, but more than "normal." Of course we hoped for the gravity issue, but needed to get it checked out once baby was born.

Surgery could be a possibility, depending on the severity of cause of the dilatation.

The concern is that if there is a blockage or other cause for the enlargement is that it will lead to urinary tract infections, kidney infections, stones and the like. It's hard for little kiddos to tell you they don't feel well in those areas, so the general thinking in the medical world is to fix the issue now rather than when there is a bigger issue later.

Emmett peed beautifully a few times before they came and took him for an ultrasound. The pediatrician in the hospital was amazing and spent a lot of time talking to us to explain more about the situation, what he was doing to get some tests done and how they would have had no idea about there being a possible problem if we hadn't told them in the first place. Emmett was otherwise well, healthy and perfect.

A couple days after his birth we took him to the children's hospital where they inserted a catheter into his little (ehem) penis and pumped fluid into his bladder to see where it went. We watched the screen as the fluid filled his bladder and stayed there, indicating there were no issues with the valves from the ureters to the kidney, so there was nothing wrong with the bladder, yay!

A few days later, we met with a urologist at the children's hospital, images of the test in hand for their review. The PA made me cry about three seconds after she entered the room after we told her about how Emmett had an ultrasound in the hospital. She began shaking her head and telling us we shouldn't have done that [cue tears] because mom's hormones are still pumping through baby's body and the issue could simply be extra hormones.

Well, being just three days postpardum, I couldn't stop crying. I sobbed the whole time we were there. I simply could not stop. I was afraid something was wrong with him, I was afraid we were putting him through tests for no reason, I was worried something would happen to his little (ehem) penis because of all the poking and prodding. Mostly, I was upset with how the PA marched in and told us we were doing everything wrong when all the other doctors had told us what we were doing was ok and normal. No one once mentioned anything about things being done out of order or unnecessarily.

Anyway, the PA and urologist explained that we'd need to have two more tests done in 30 days.

Thirty days later I took Emmett back to the children's hospital for a MAG3. This time they used an IV to pump him full of fluid that would fill up his kidneys to see where it would go, then monitored to see how quickly they'd go from full to half full. Draining slower than 10 minutes is indicative of a problem; Emmett's drained in 3.5 minutes!

Here are Emmett's kidneys and bladder all lit up from the fluid that was injected. I got to stay in the room with him while he was strapped to a little table. He did beautifully, considering all the tubes, needles and swaddle!

The next week we went for a follow-up ultrasound to measure the size of the kidneys. The results:

Right kidney function: 57%
Left kidney function: 43%

This was overall good. They found no obstruction, but it's clear the right side still indicated mild dilatation (normal function is 50/50...).

Basically, there is still a slight enlargement of one kidney, but nothing to be concerned about at all. Everyone has one that's a little bigger than the other! We do go back in January to make sure nothing has changed significantly, but otherwise we are done with all that kidney business. Thank you, God!

We go back for another ultrasound in early February to make sure nothing has changed. After that, pending good results, we'll be done.

Next up: why Emmett has blood in his poop. Wheeeeee......