For 9 long months, my daughter cried out to me. If she could have spoken, she would have told me what ailed her so. As it was, I went in for visit after visit only to be turned away and given an array of reflux medications. Zantac to start, before even her one month birthday, followed by hundreds of insurance-reimbursed dollars spent on Prevacid solutabs that never worked. Hours and hours I spent reading about acid reflux, visiting the forums, searching for answers for my littlest one that the doctors were not providing for even though it was within their reach all along.
I can describe to you the inner turmoil I felt knowing that my daughter was sick and I could not be home for her. I can describe the endless insomniac nights and the bitter arguments with my husband as a result. I can describe to you the multiple medications that evolved over my head dealing with my postpartum depression. Only now, I can describe it with reason because then there was no reason. I had a child who would not grow like normal children, I though she was high-needs, and the doctors thought that perhaps it was a silent reflux. Give mother the medications, send her home, little Scarlett, my "Rayne", will outgrow this, we're sure. Don't all fussy babies get better after a few months?
But she didn't outgrow it; in fact, she didn't grow, which in the end was the last straw. Failure to thrive, failure to thrive is what got us admitted to the Barbara Bush Children's Hospital when my baby was two days shy of nine months. That, and the fact that I had quit my full-time, benefit-providing, high-paying job just one week prior. I knew I could not go on at work with my baby's ailments at the fore of my mind. I knew that something needed to be done. Ultimately, I demanded a referral to a gastroenterologist and it was that demand that got us the attention she deserved.
October 7, 2009: We were admitted at the Barbara Bush Children's Hospital in Portland, ME.
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