Midnight Tea-time For Kaiden

It's been an interesting week. For some reason or another, Kaiden actually slept through the night without waking up for midnight tea...Once.

Yes, it was apparently an isolated incident as the very next night, he was up at his usual 11:30p.m. tea-time for teddy grahams & milk, a shot of his reflux medication and a bit of Tylenol.

As it turns out, apparently our neighbor leaves for work at about that time each week-night. I still am not sure if that is the culprit here, though.

I had thought that maybe this night-waking might be from his reflux because as of late he has taken to making what we affectionately call, "Demon baby noises" which are really grunting and strange guttural noises.

He used to do this in the hospital when he was first born, and later once we got him home, he seemed to do it all through-out the night.

His pediatrician added a medication to his existing reflux regiment and the grunting stopped and he started sleeping peacefully.

Of course, once the little gremlin noises started up again, I immediately thought that it might be his reflux rearing its ugly head. He had also started spitting up again which is very unlike an 18 month old.

Poor little dear, he even knows to ask for his "Med-son" as he calls it. It seems to be helping a tiny bit, but he still isn't eating well, and the grunting continues.

Another lovely part of the reflux diagnosis is that the medication makes him constipated. I have gotten to the point when I cannot tell if he is grunting and straining over his tummy hurting from the reflux, or if it is because he has to go potty.

I have tried giving him basically mild and light foods to try and ease something into his tummy so that he won't be hungry, but he always seems to turn his head the other way.

He would have normally just thrown his food, but I had to stop feeding the babies their meals in the feeding chairs because once Kai started throwing his food, the others would join right in!

We now feed them from the table as if the plate is ours and they are getting some sort of a treat from it. Oddly enough, this is working and the babies are actually getting more food this way.

I just hope that this phase ends soon so that they don't grow up with the table manners of Helen Keller!

Kaiden is already a light-weight for his age and height, so I am worried about him losing weight over all of this! He will drink a little milk and have a few teddy grahams every now and then.

Please don't think of me as a horrid Mum because I am letting him eat whatever he will no matter what the food happens to be. It's just that I would rather him have something in his tummy than he cry over it being empty!

The last few nights have been rather rough because he appears very constipated, yet his glycerin drops aren't helping him go potty any. One night, I even tried double dosing on them just to make sure that it got where it was supposed to be going!

I feel so awful over the whole thing. The poor dear can't eat over his throat burning from the reflux and when he has to out of sheer hunger, his tummy hurts because he cannot go potty.

I have been putting off giving him prune juice, but it looks like I am going to have to go that route soon if things do not get any better.

Last night, in order to get him to stay down in his own bed, we hauled the laptop upstairs to his bedroom and ran the cord to the plug in the hallway for him so that he could go to sleep while watching his favorite thing- the fishy screen saver that changes fish randomly as well as the light show.

Oddly enough, the fishies kept him distracted enough to get him to sleep for the most part all night (not counting tea-time at nearly midnight!)

I also discovered another reason for his crying and night-waking...He is cutting the last two teeth on the bottom at the same time.

I was nice and rubbed the points all the way through for him so that it won't bother him as much anymore. Now if I can only get his tummy coordinated, we will be in business!