7 days. 7 days is all we lasted at home!

The first couple of days were bliss and everything we could have hoped for, it was like being back in that newborn bubble, feeling like you’ve taken your baby home for the first time.

But Romeo was still really sick, it was becoming more frequent. Changing bed covers in the middle of the night, not wanting to go any where in case he was sick. Going to the supermarket and having to embrace my top being covered in sick just so it didn’t go any where else in the aisle.

By day 5 he was really quite bad, he threw up every single feed and now he wouldn’t settle, at all!

In a 48 hour period the most he slept was half an hour at a time, he probably only had 8 hours out of those 48. Me and Jimmy would have to do shifts of staying awake with him through the night, trying anything we could to settle him. Nothing worked.

We were getting increasingly worried now. We had our cardiac review in Southampton the next day but we’re toying with the idea of taking him to hospital. But if we take him to our local hospital chances are we wouldn’t be discharged in time to get him to his cardiac check up but at the same time we can’t just roll up to Southampton in the middle of the night. We held out that night, it was torture and we had no sleep but it was needed.

As soon as we got to the Ocean Ward they saw how unsettled he was and did blood tests straight away, they somehow managed to do an echo although he screamed the whole way through. His heart was fine, his blood tests were fine but he was so dehydrated by this point and this definitely wasn’t helped by the heatwave we had. He was actually drinking bottles, draining the whole thing (something he hasn’t done in 2 months) although he couldn’t keep them down.

The next 2 days consisted of Romeo being fed dioralyte exclusively to see if his milk was the problem and by then he had perked up completely and not one single vomit. Everyone agreed he clearly had an intolerance to the milk.

He’s always been difficult, we have tried 5 different milks with Romeo and none ever seemed to agree with him. Either “reflux”, runny poos, him crying with bad belly ache. I often voiced my concerns about it on our last hospital stay but it was always palmed off as reflux.

Finally he was prescribed some amino acid milk as the dieticians agreed he has cows milk protein allergy and honestly it made all the difference, he is so much happier and no longer in discomfort. We were discharged again after 5 days in hospital.

So for all you Mumma’s out there, trust your gut if something’s not right. Keep hounding them and don’t let the doctors continuously tell you it’s just “reflux”