Failure To Thrive... What is a Leaky Gut?

I promise that at some point this thread will end. You are a good friend for hanging in there. If I tried to put it all in one post it would look like a Russian novel. Looooonnnnngggggggg, in case you were a Science major. We left off at our first doctor visit and are gearing up for the follow up. In my trusty diaper bag was the measurement card from what I will now call “the doctor visit that made me feel like puking.” It is a technical label, what can I say. Our little baby was in the 0.02 percent for weight. You read that right. Not even one whopping percent. She weighed it at 10 pounds and she was 6 months old. We are a petite family so this was not a total shock. What did shock me was that after the addition of the probiotics and the multivitamins, the baby dropped to 9.6 pounds. In two weeks. When you are already a runt and you are that young, losing that many ounces is dramatic.

During this visit I was told to quit breastfeeding. What? Excuse me? I wish I would have fought this more, but when your baby is withering away, congested 24/7, not sleeping at night, clingy, and absolutely adorable you do not always have the mental capacity to think everything through. My brain was in panic mode so I just agreed. I was told to try a goat milk formula as that may be easier for her to digest. Again, why? I had to go home and research like a crazy person. Which at this point I pretty much was.

The stool kit that would have indicated bacteria and maybe candida, not sure, was a bust because we were given the wrong one. Instead of the small GI kit we were given a 4 container Stool Kit that I am not sure even the Jolly Green Giant could have filled in two weeks time. You can imagine my joy (bitter sarcasm) to find out that not only would we not have this answer to the puzzle of why my little girl was not thriving, but also that I had been scraping diapers and filling my fridge with feces all for nothing.

Doctors are not God and they do not know what is going on with each patient the second he walks in the exam room. Although I felt that this particular doctor did not get a gold star in keeping me in the loop of her mental process, I also know that she might have been trying to go for obvious options like a weak gut or poor milk supply before jumping into things more serious, if you will. So my emotional meltdown that ensued after this visit was more to the "unknown" than it was this doctor per se. We had just moved a few months before this visit halfway across the country. I had no babysitters for my other children and I didn’t want to impose three kids on any of my new friends. I mean, my kids are cool and all, but plus three is not the same level of favor as hey can I borrow some sugar. So I had all four kids with me. And I lost it. It took every.ounce.of.willpower to make it to the car without dropping and sobbing. Partly I was just an emotional wreck after taking care of a newborn, three other kids, moving, cooking, cleaning, smatterings of homeschooling, and whatever else I do each day. But the fact that I had to stop nursing was brutal. I did not nurse my first daughter because it was too hard for me, but I did nurse the next three. It was not a breastfeed or bust issue, but more that I felt like I had failed my daughter. When you are living in crisis mode that part of your brain called logic goes on vacation. Regardless of whether it was true or not, I felt like I had let her down. Like I was not eating the right foods. Or drinking enough water. Or drinking too much coffee. Not producing enough for her to survive. I mentally flogged myself over and over again wondering what it could be about my milk that caused this. That feeling you get when you have balled your eyes out and are so empty, exhausted that you just want to sleep forever— that is what it was like. Only I still had to move on for my family. And I had a lot of research to do to try and figure out what could be going on. Maybe I am just too Type A. Is that a thing? But I wanted the doctor to explain to me the WHY of her choices. Give a dog a bone, ya know. It took all of my super powers to stay off the internet. I told myself: Self, only research what you know. Do not go to the darkside and explore endless possibilities. So I research failure to thrive because it was the closest thing to what was happening with her. Personally I think that label is code for We have no real clue, but whatever. I researched goat milk formula and found great, reassuring information about it from books like THIS and the Weston A. Price Foundation HERE. I will admit that this took my hippie organic nerd mom status to a whole new level. But I was okay with that. To sum things up, at this point in our journey we knew she was clingy, listless, covered in weepy eczema, shrinking, not sleeping through the night like she had been, and did not seem to being absorbing the nutrients she needed through my milk or was just not getting enough. I was cooking meals with a baby on my hip, exhausted, and desperate for answers. When we left we were told to stop breastfeeding and try a goat milk formula (it is more than just plain goat milk), use coconut oil on her skin, and continue the probiotic and multivitamin. Klaire Labs powdered and FloraDix were the types suggested for us. But then no follow up visit was scheduled. Hmmmmmm. Although this doctor was great in many ways, the overall experience was less than stellar. When you are in a situation like this you need someone supportive. I omitted a lot of the tacky comments she made because they will not help you. But if you are in a similar situation with your child, I encourage you to find a doctor that actually helps you and makes you feel like you are in this together. When we finally found that doctor, it was amazing. I will also encourage you with this: God create us a lot tougher than we think. He gave me extra energy, understanding children, lifted me up and walked me through some hard nights. More on this later, but I clung to the promises of the Bible like I never have before. God was my refuge. My rock. Without Him I would have probably would have robbed a bakery. I will also encourage you that God made babies tougher than we think. My little thing is a fighter. She is a tough cookie. Hang in there.