About a month ago, Baby G stopped taking his bottles. He slapped at them, screamed, arched his back, clamped his lips shut.. you get the picture. Talk about awful! I had no idea what to do!

Wait.. I take that back. I was afraid of what I was going to have to do if it kept up. You see, being Infant KB's mommy had it's very hard moments. Bottle feeding was one of them. KB had terrible reflux, which you can read about in dozens of my posts. She did all of those things that G was starting to do, and it got to the point where we had to force-feed her bottles. That was probably the hardest part of having a preemie. Seriously, having her in the  NICU for 27 days didn't hurt me as badly as having to force-feed her for 6 months.

G started life so easy.. He latched onto my breast his first day of life, took a bottle easily when I weaned him to formula at 3 months, and loved solid food the very first time we introduced him to it. He was easily drinking 32 oz of formula a day when he tried his first food, so it was time. All of a sudden, two weeks later, it came to a screeching halt. He was refusing every bottle, only getting maybe 16 ounces of formula a day from them, and those ounces were fought for! Food though, was a completely different story. He was still trying new things and gobbling up everything we gave him, so I knew he was hungry.

Don't let this precious face fool you.. I'm giving Mommy a hard time right now!

We tried everything.. first we switched his formula from Similac Sensitive for Spit Up to Enfamil AR. Nothing. We changed nipple sizes,  varied bottle temperatures, and added cereal to his bottles thinking maybe he was having reflux since this was the way KB acted when her reflux flared. Nothing. One day, four things happened.. #1, he had a slight temperature, so I gave him some Tylenol. #2, I found some of KB's left-over Prevacid and gave him that, too. #3, He took 2 full bottles in a row. #4 I talked to his pediatrician for the first time and she said it sounded like it could be reflux. Awesome. Of course, I had already decided that was the case since he had full bottles after the Prevacid. She also said that as long as he was making a few wet diapers a day, he was ok. She told me that stage 1 baby food has a lot of liquid, so he was getting that, and that since we make our own baby food, it's even better.



Having some delicious mommy-made squash

So a week went by, and nothing changed. He met his pediatrician for the first time on Aug. 22. He weighed 15.25 pounds, and she said he looked healthy. She also wrote a prescription for more Prevacid and said to come back if he got worse about eating.

Two more weeks went by, and the only thing that changed was that it did get worse. The Prevacid didn't seem to help at all, even after we increased his dose slightly. Then I realized that I could see two little bitty white spots on his lower gums.

After a terrible weekend of G hardly eating anything, and Honey being away for work on top of that, I made another appointment with the pediatrician. I told Honey over the phone that if I got in there and she said "Oh, it's teething." I was going to feel like a huge jerk. And that's exactly what happened. She told me to give him Tylenol every 4 hours. Oh, and after I nearly cried to her about how he hadn't been taking bottles at all, she showed me his weight. 16.1 pounds, which means he gained a full pound in 2 weeks! I told her how stupid I felt, and she was so kind about it. "Don't worry, this is my job. I say "It's just teething" probably 10 times a day."


So now, a week later, G has 1 tooth in his mouth and at least 2 more will be closely following. Oh, and he doesn't have reflux at all. Nope, this is just how teething affects my baby. My poor, poor baby.