My world of spit up

Feb
10

Since my day and my clothes are both full of spit up, I offer these thoughts on the subject:

  • It smells really bad. Angie warned me, and I did not believe her, but it stinks, even when dry. I thought we had a lot of burp rags, but there are somehow never enough clean ones.
  • There is a lot of it. Turns out Viola has a touch of the old acid reflux, confirmed by her pediatrician yesterday. One or both of the sphincter muscles in her esophagus is immature, so lots of her meals come back up to greet us. Joe gets the gold medal for receiving a load inside his sweatshirt and in his slipper, which he subsequently stepped into, both in one night.
  • It stains dark-colored clothes. This is probably why baby clothes are all white and pastelly. We did not know this, and so Viola's precious few clothing items of saturated hue - fuschia, chocolate brown - are now stained. Not to mention a lot of our dark-colored shirts and her bright orange moby wrap.
  • It hurts coming back up. So much for my mental image of a happy baby letting forth a gush of white curds seemingly without noticing. Viola is clearly in pain when she spits up.
  • It's scary when projectile. This happened for the first time at bookclub this weekend, miraculously missing both upholstered furniture and rugs to land on my sweater and the wood floor. It traveled.

The good news is, we seem to have turned a corner on all the crying by alleviating some of her discomfort. I hope someday to look back on the third to fifth weeks of her life as the crying time that preceded the happy time. To commemorate, I offer this crying montage:

Viola Crying Montage

4 comments

landscape-lover

Hi

What a great blog. My little one is 5 now, so all this is a dim and distant memory, but not sure I'll ever completely forget those sleepless nights! It definitely gets better after about six weeks, I promise!
I'm actually contacting you about something else entirely: I saw the lovely photos you took of the Spiral Jetty in 2007 and wondered if I could have your permission to use one of them in article I'm writing on the jetty for a British journal (The Historic Gardens Review). I would of course credit it - something like "image courtesy of Jessica Balsam." Many thanks.

jessica's picture
jessica

I'd be honored to have my (or my husband's) photographs used for the article. Please email me at jessicabalsam [at] gmail.com and we can discuss further. Thanks for getting in touch!

adam's picture
adam

As you know, you can see what people have searched for on google to get to the pages on this site. My favorite:
* "infant curd spit up"

And a close second:
* "does cereal hold you longer than toast for breakfast?"

admin

Add to the list:

  • buttermilk and toast to reduce acid
  • no toast, no cereal breakfast
  • toast or cereal

Looks like you picked a good (or bad?) domain name.

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