My Baby the Car Battery

When Erik was an infant, he cried more than other babies. When I put my nose to his sweet face, I could smell something strange. As I knew nothing about babies, I didn't know what to make of it. It was a combination of the sharp scent of peppermint and biting acid. We trudged along as new parents, rocking him, swaddling him, and soothing him constantly. I was finally aware of how difficult our situation was when his pediatrician looked at me and quietly asked how Brian and I were doing. The look on her face was deadly serious, and all of my feelings of exhaustion and depression were instantly validated. At one point, we were asked to feed Erik every two hours 24 hours a day. Every time the alarm would sound, I thought we were simply going to drop dead. After this failed to produce positive results for any one of the three of us, we were allowed to cease and desist. I was asked to cease nursing my baby and instead give him a type of "predigested" formula that cost $25 a can.

We took Erik to the hospital and put him under an x-ray machine. He drank a bottle filled with formula that would glow on the radiographic films. He swallowed the substance as they captured x-ray after x-ray, but the chalky liquid came back up into his throat so many times the technicians said there was no question he had gastroesophageal reflux and saw no point in continuing to irradiate our baby (One year later at the children's hospital in the city just mere minutes after we were handed our devastating diagnosis, I held our son in place at an x-ray machine while I sobbed all over the lead smock I was required to wear. An upright study performed while he ate a cookie would produce the same results).

It was then we were prescribed medication, and our lives changed. First, we gave him Reglan. That evening we had a baby mysteriously screaming in even more agony and spent some time on the phone with a physician who instructed us to stop this preparation immediately. After that medication cleared out of his system, we were given a trial of Prevacid, a medication that turns off the pumps in the stomach that produce acid. The change was immediate. My baby began to emit the soft scent babies should for the first time, and he no longer seemed to be wracked with pain. It was nothing short of a miracle after months of what felt like hell on earth. He has been on Prevacid morning and night ever since. When the doctor suggested we try weaning him long ago, we both laughed too loudly at this and declined.

Now that Erik is older, I decided to stop his morning dose of medication last week and continue giving it to him in the evening. This was two or three days ago, and he seemed to be doing fine. However, this morning he woke up grouchy and refused to eat hardly anything at all. His feelings were crushed when I scolded him for kicking me with his long legs as I changed his diaper, and he repeatedly worked his lips as if he had put a little piece of something in his mouth. He sounded junky and congested up into his nose. Before he could leave in his father's arms for day care, it was clear to me that the reflux was back with the exact same intensity as before. I could actually see his throat beginning to work trying to keep the acid down.

I was already feeling a little blue this morning. The sky is heavy with clouds and the holidays are looming over me like a glittery monster, complicated and heavy, and I want to ring in the New Year already. Seeing the ruthless symptoms of reflux manifest themselves in my poor son for the first time in years was a little unnerving and made me feel like the worst mother on earth. It was also a grim reminder of the darkness this diagnosis brought to this family at one time. I could have done without this today. I thought perhaps that there would be an improvement with age.

There hasn't been any improvement whatsoever.

Erik left sobbing carried down the driveway in his father's arms with tiny beads from the dissolved Prevacid SoluTab on his lips. I'm saying a prayer right now that the magic properties of this miraculous medication take hold in his gut before he is subjected to the additional, terrible trauma of being immersed in a group of squealing, laughing children.

All I can say is this: If I could marry the good folks at TAP Pharmaceutical Products, Incorporated, I would. Thank God for them.

Little Things

She drew her legs up to her chest and firmly embraced her knees as she sat on the porch. The sharp sound of crickets began to rise from the grass--a pleasant sound that slowly gained momentum and threatened to become abrasive to her ears. As the sun crept lower in the smoky sky and cast grapefruit-colored light across the desert, she suddenly felt like she was drowning but was too tired to fight the sensation or talk herself out of the rising panic in her chest. Exhaustion had soaked into each and every bone, deep under a burning layer of her aching muscles. It took effort at this point to move at all.

The dinner she had once again gathered ingredients for and poured herself into preparing for her son sat untouched in its yellow plastic bowl at the bottom of the kitchen sink, mixing with warm tap water and gradually becoming a cloudy soup of garbage. They had instead filled their son's growling stomach full of random bits and pieces they had found in the kitchen without much thought at all. Tears had threatened to spill from her eyes when he refused to place any of the food she had prepared in his mouth. It had been months since he had eaten much of anything she had prepared for dinner. The cheese quesadilla she fixed for him earlier for lunch was lying in a rejected, hardening ruin at the bottom of the kitchen trash can. She remembered that when her son was born, her breast milk had transformed into battery acid in his tiny throat, causing him to yowl in agony and develop burns on his chin. He had not been able to consume that, either.

When you are in agony, the little things bring you to your knees.

The top arch of the sun finally sank behind the dark wall of mountains, and she drew in a deep, greedy breath of evening air, clearing her head again. The crickets were practically screaming now, and her head felt like it was going to explode like a rotten pumpkin. She rose from her chair and went inside to lie on the bed to await dark, numbing waves of sleep and the hope of one more morning. To her, awakening to a brand new day was like opening a Christmas gift. Every day.

When you are in agony, the little things keep you going.