Update

I haven't posted much lately because this baby is making it very difficult to get any time to do anything.  She cries nonstop.  And when I say nonstop, I mean, if she isn't sleeping, eating, or....right.  If she's not eating or sleeping she's crying.  Literally.  We get maybe 30 minutes a day of awake, non-crying baby.  She is miserable.  We went to the pediatrician yesterday for her one month checkup, and I told him how she is behaving.  While we were there, she had a little hissy, crying, flailing, arching her back like she does, not taking the bottle even though she's hungry.  She'll act hungry but when you put the bottle in her mouth she shakes her head like she can't find it.  So Dr. B just stood and had me try to feed her and watched her.  He asked some other questions, like does she eat often?  Does she have a pattern to her crying?  Is she spitting up a lot?

Finally, after he watched her for a few minutes, he had me put her down and he checked her out.  Then he told me that he thinks she has reflux.  He said it looks like she is a yo-yo spitter-upper, meaning she has reflux and swallows it back down instead of spitting it out, which means ouchy coming up, and ouchy going back down.  He said these babies are completely miserable, which Elena definitely is (and as a result, so is her mother).  He said she's eating so often because it feels good going down, but of course then it just makes it come up more.  She's arching her back because she's hurting, crying because she's hurting (of course), and making little "urp" noises because she's swallowing it. 

Dr. B is always great, and he could tell how frustrated and tired I am.  He told me his youngest son was the same way and he completely understood my feelings of not liking her and being so frustrated that she's crying so much and I can't fix it, etc.  He told me he wanted to send his youngest back and if he'd had enough packing peanuts he would have!  It was so good to hear my doctor really understanding me. 

He left for a few minutes and came back with step one.  First, we changed her formula again, to Nutramigen.  The second thing Dr. B did was prescribe baby Zantac.  She takes it twice a day and it's supposed to work quickly.  She has to be kept vertical for at least 20 minutes after she eats, which is often.  He told me that they used a soft-structured carrier of a particular brand and it saved them, because baby could be kept vertical easily.  I have two kinds of slings, but Elena hates them, so I went out and bought a carrier today that I'll try out tomorrow.  I'm going to buy and try and return until I find one she'll tolerate, because I simply cannot carry her around vertically all day and get anything done.  It takes two hands to hold her up that way, and that means I cannot do anything.  A carrier would at least allow me to get some things done (not everything because you can't bend over, so laundry is hard to do, cleaning up the floor is hard, but at least I can play with Karina, do dishes, and eat my lunch. 

So far, she's had 3 doses of the Zantac and been on the Nutramigen since yesterday afternoon.  So far, nothing has changed.  I was hoping for some faster results, especially since he said we should see the Zantac working right away.  We're going to see how things go through the weekend, and if we don't see some real improvement, we'll call and see what the next step is. 

Today was terrible, she pretty much cried all day.  I was at my mom's for dinner, with my aunt and brother who were there to celebrate my birthday a day early, and between Mom, Nana, and Aunt Betty, they pretty much took care of her.  But I still heard her crying, and towards the end of the evening I was trying to calm her.  I cried all the way home, because listening to her cry so long, knowing it's because she hurts, and on top of that the irritating part of it, is just too much sometimes.  I know we'll eventually get it under control, or she'll just outgrow it, but sooner would be much, much better.  For both of us.