I am exhausted. Mentally, physically, and emotionally. My anxiety is through the roof. I’m emotionally spent. I’m physically exhausted. I’m beyond irritated. I’m just….tired.
Joey will not take a bottle. Will not. Which has set off a chain of effects that is making everyone’s life a little more difficult and a little more stressful. It has been three weeks and he will not take a bottle. We have tried everything. I have tried giving them. Joe has tried. I even resorted to having Mark and Rose try to give the bottle. We have tried 6 bottles, at least two different flow nipples for each. We have tried a syringe, a cup, a pacifier. Hot bottles. Cold bottles. Warm bottles. New milk. Older Milk. Formula. Different positions. (Apparently I’m now Dr. Seuss). We have tried it all and he won’t take the bottle.
I wake up in the morning and he eats before I go to work, which he usually finishes up around 6:50AM. I walk out the door and worry all day about him not eating. I usually text Joseph around 9 or 10 to see if he’s tried the bottle yet. By 11 the baby is in full melt down mode and won’t eat. He eventually gives up and goes to sleep only to wake up a few hours later starving and mad to realize I’m not there and go back to sleep again, defeated. This has been three weeks.
As you can imagine this is very stressful. Joe is stressed because the baby is constantly upset and he’s still trying to take care of Mark and Rose. I’m stressed because I’m at work feeling like a terrible mother and worrying about my child’s well being and if he’s going to be ok. Joey is stressed because he’s so incredibly hungry and I’m not there to help him. He gives up.
I have talked to the pediatrician three times. Yes, three. She continues to tell me “he’ll eat”. When very clearly he won’t. Today when we went in she said “well he gained 3 ounces so he’s fine”. Yes, he gained three ounces, however, it’s been a month and prior to this past month he was gaining 2-3 pounds per month so 3 ounces is very abnormal for him for a month. Also, he eats almost constantly from the time I walk in the door after work until right around midnight. So he’s eating, which explains any weight gain, but it’s definitely not normal when he’s eating. To put this in perspective as to why I’m concerned even though he’s “gained”. He was in the 64th percentile a month ago. He has now dropped down to the 59th percentile. He was on a nice steady growth right along that 64 line and now he’s headed on the decline. He has fallen off his nice steady line.
3 weeks. 3 weeks of the pediatrician telling me “he’ll eat” and “he won’t starve”. Today she actually said to me “I think he’s just yanking your chain” and “he’s just strong willed”. Um, excuse me?! This isn’t a fucking game, this is my child. A small child. If I don’t speak up for him and try and solve this issue who will?
Needless to say, we are going to be switching pediatricians. I ran around all day today trying to figure this out. Finding resources, any resources I can to try and get him to eat. With no luck I might add. The pediatrician didn’t help. I spoke to several different people looking for resources to no avail. I called the lactation consultant from the hospital I gave birth at only to get an answering machine. I’m at my wit’s end and don’t know where to turn from here.
I cry everyday all the way to work. I get to work and paint a smile on my face and try to ignore the pain I’m feeling. But my soul is getting ripped apart thinking about how my little man won’t eat. I worry all the way home, sometimes crying on the way home out of panic. I get home and he breathes a sigh of relief before yelling at me because now he doesn’t know if he can trust that he’ll actually get to eat. Dinner time hits and I make dinner, barely staying awake while I alternate between dinner and feeding Joey. Then after the kids go to bed I look around the house a wave hits me. I look around at everything that I’ve been putting off because obviously feeding my child comes first. But I’m the only one who does anything around the house. Seriously. I do the dishes, the laundry, cook, clean, take the trash out, pay all the bills, fix the cars, fix the house, teach the kids, bathe them, feed them, help them brush their teeth, clothe them, brush hair, and cut hair. I look around and I get so overwhelmed. How am I ever going to catch up? How am I ever to go get everything together? It’s too much for one person to handle.
To top off the past three weeks of Joey not eating, there’s a whole slew of other issues too. Rose keeps begging for attention and wanting to be treated like a baby. She keeps throwing tantrums and crying all day and nothing helps calm her down. Mark treats Rose like she is his personal servant and sends her to ask for snacks for the both of them, or water, or toys or whatever it is he wants. My truck’s check engine light is on again. Partly because it needs an oil change and partly because there is a coolant leak…again. And we ripped apart our bathroom to remodel thinking it would be a quick project that we would work on over the weekends, but our plans keep falling through and we don’t have anyone to watch the kids and it’s kind of a two person project to get the drywall up. As if it couldn’t get any better we got a nasty letter from saying we had to get rid of our bathtub because trash doesn’t pick them up (they picked it up). And then now our main sewer line is clogged and needs to get snaked, which shouldn’t be a big deal, but with everything else going on we don’t really have time to deal with that right now.
Basically, in short, I’m worried about my kid, I’m overwhelmed and if someone else tells me “he’ll eat when he’s hungry” I am going to fucking flip my lid. If anyone, anywhere, has a suggestion on how to get him to take a bottle please please please let me know because I am tired. He is keeping me up all night feeding and worrying and I am just completely, in every sense of the word, exhausted. And so are Joe and Joey. What a year already.