Reflux, and a sick baby 2

Well I was tagged by a twitter friend and asked to help out, so here you go Mich @ Mummy from the heart blog. Mich blogs these things so much better than me, so please do go to her blog for a read of her version.

As a Mum I hate those starving kids adverts for charities on TV, not because I’m tight, but because it makes me feel helpless and useless I can’t do much to help them, I can’t go there personally and give those children clean water or food or hugs, and I won’t get into a financial debate here, but things are tight at the moment.

I am very glad I was born in England, with clean water, and access to food and medicines.
My youngest son, although not born early, or by C-section had a very similar problem to the situation mention in Mich’s post (linked above). Jen started out at an OK newborn baby weight, but it was soon clear to me, despite the PND, that he was not well. He would vomit almost every feed. I also breastfeed and the doctors wanted me to stop and put him on bottles…. not that simple due to the PND – I was totally afraid to move, convinced I’d bleed to death if I did. I had had a traumatic birth and there was actually logic in this phobia.

I *had to* breastfeed as I could do this by getting hubby to leave me snacks, fruit etc and a biggg bottle of water on the bed, as well as spare clothing for baby and nappies/wipes. I would still be in the same spot 8 hours later, until hubby came home and took me to the loo, or I would phone the Health Visitor to help me. I could not possibly walk downstairs to put the kettle on, would take me an hour to shift myself from one place on the bed to another, i.e sat on my side of the bed to moving to Hubby’s side. Fixed like concrete by my mind. Sounds crazy, kinda was!

I didn’t get much help except people saying “Pull yourself together” and that sort of encouraging thing. I at least knew I could phone 999 if I did bleed badly, in Africa they do not have that back up.

So Jen was losing weight fast, not due to my situation, but due to a reflux issue. The Health visitor and doctors had assumed at first Jen was losing weight due to my milk because I wasn’t eating much, and worse, it was implied I wasn’t even feeding him. But later they agreed it was a physical problem with Jen. It was like there was a lid on his stomach that wouldn’t close after drinking milk. It was explained to me properly at the time but I don’t remember now, something to do with a flap in his throat not behaving as it should and that he could outgrow it.

I had already gone to giving him milk little and often, and supplementing with formula every few feeds as I realised that he was sick less this way. The doctors gave him baby Gaviscon and referred him to a specialist at the hospital to help fatten him back up. For a few weeks he was really ill, but gradually perked up although wasn’t quite right for months, I gave him baby food early and this also reduced the vomiting. A milk feed plus a few spoons of baby rice or a squashed rusk, gentle solids stayed down much better. He started to improve I would say due equally to changing the feeding patterns and medications. If he had been an African born baby, so underweight already, with a weak Mother and with the added problem of diseases and flies and dirty water, would he have lived? Quite possibly not!

And so to the point of this post……. One.org want you to know of their “THRIVE” campaign.

One.org

• More than a billion people, one in five of the world’s population, live on less than $1.25 a day. A billion people will go to bed hungry or malnourished tonight.
• This year, 178 million children, more than twice the number of children in the United States, will reach their 3rd birthday stunted. Their brains and bodies will never fully recover.

Tweet using the hashtag #LetsThrive

Sign up and offer your voice to ONE.org. They already have more than 2.5 million people worldwide supporting them but it is important that this number continues to grow and us, the common people can help them to put pressure on African leaders, donor governments and the private sector to focus on thirty of the poorest countries that have smart agriculture and nutrition plans. Those plans are tested, costed and affordable. They need to be put into practice.  For that they need two things: political leadership and financial backing. ONE’s campaign will insist on both. But we know leaders won’t act unless lots of people urge them to do so.  ONE’s strength is its collective action – one plus one plus one quickly adds up to a lion’s roar.

Spread the word with a blog or Facebook post – please do put a post up on your blog or share about the ONE Thrive campaign as a  facebook status. Check out this Google Doc for some simple information you can use in your post. Our voices count! Do you remember what bloggers managed to do for Save the Children last September?  Let’s do that again – we really can….

Please do tag some other bloggers to join in as well, I was tagged which is why I am writing now. Share this, reblog this, tweet tweet tweet about the campaign using the hashtag #LetsThrive and urge people to sign up to ONE and offer their voice.