allergic to what?!

Oh my. Where to begin.

In most recent news, Jeff, Roman and I spent Friday (the 10th) evening in the ER. I'll back up. Jeff and I dropped Roman off at my moms so we could go on a much needed , overdue date. I packed some formula-similac sensitive-cause i didn't know how much breast milk my mom had in her freezer. I've been wanting to introduce formula to Roman because I hate pumping. It's time consuming and i never know if i was going to pump 2 oz or 6 oz. So frustrating. So instead of stressing out about pumping enough for when i work on Saturday's, i thought having him on some formula would be a great alternative.

Jeff and i had a great date. Pancheros, coldstone, and a trip to Jax to get Jeff some arch supports. When we returned to my moms the horrible night began.

My mom had given Roman maybe 3 to 4 oz of the formula and had just finished a few minutes before we walked in the door. Roman was extremely tired and crying, but in addition to crying he was gagging. My heart starts pounding. The first thing that goes through my head is "what's in his mouth!?" He's been teething with a snotty nose and a cough that had developed the morning before, so we originally thought that maybe the gagging was due to some excess flem from that, on top of being waaaaay overtired. My gut, however, told me different. I felt sick to my stomach and didnt know how to help him. It was the worst feeling ever. After several minutes Jeff finally gets him to sleep. When he slepts, he didn't gag, but when he woke up, he did. I looked at him sleeping and notice he looked RED! Now, he had been crying pretty hard so part of me thought it was from that, but another part of me wasn't completely convinced.

After sleeping for maybe 20 minutes he woke up again and I took him from Jeff. He was red from head to toe. Something else is going on here. It sounded like he's still having trouble breathing/swallowing and right then I made the decision to take him to the ER. So, Jeff and I packede him up, and headed out! I should confess my sin of driving about 60mph down 13th street....Sorry about that.

We got to the ER, got checked in and waited. Now, why is it they make you WAIT in the EMERGENCY ROOM?!?!?! No clue. It was maybe 10 minutes (but felt like an hour) and the nurse called us back. She took Romans temp, weight, and got the information from us on what happened and what possibly caused this reaction.

Doctor Rathe came in (he was great...really liked him) and we went over once again what was different about the day. The formula. That was the ONLY difference. So, we conclude he's allergic to the formula. Roman received some benadryl (but not before he threw up all of the formula...that was messy), a steroid shot, and a nebulizer treatment (which he thought was kind of cool) because there was some wheezing going on. We arrived at the hospital around 8:30pm and left around 11:45pm. Roman was put on an oral steroid, prednisone, for a few days and benadryl as needed. That prednisone is some pretty serious stuff. We got the max dosage perscribable.

that's just a bottle of tylenol to keep him preoccupied....

not a fan of the steroid shot

neb treatment

Today we had a follow up appointment with dr. nau. I kind of gave him a run down on what happened (he had Ro's chart right there, so he pretty much knew already). I learned a few things from the doctor today. #1. Roman was having an anaphalxysis reaction to the formula (the hospital just called it hives....?) #2. Roman is most likely allergic to cow's milk (protein). #3. Dr. Nau said normally children grow out of this sort of allergy in their toddler years, however, most children who react to cow's milk protein don't react as badly as Roman did. #4. Roman will need to see Dr. Nassif for a food allergies test.

Roman will be getting an allergy test done next Friday, the 24th to determine for sure if it is indeed cow's milk he is allergic to. They will also do a slew of other allergens while we're there. The way they go about this procedure is this: take the allergens and poke my poor baby's skin (just under the surface) with it and wait about 15 minutes to see the results. whatever makes a mosquito-like bump = allergy.

I praise God for healing Roman and not allowing a worse situation to have happened. I praise God for our doctors who were able to use their God-given knowledge to give Roman the necessary treatments that, inevitably i think, saved his life. I praise God for being in control.

Please pray for us! I'm somewhat an emotional wreck over the whole ordeal. Pray that Roman is a trooper during his test, as it will be pretty uncomfortable for him. Also pray for Roman as he is cutting a tooth currently, and is pretty cranky on top of everything else. Pray Roman doesn't have any other life-threatening allergies. Pray that we will feel God's comfort and control during this whole thing. Pray for me as I may have to create an entirely new approach to feeding Roman and introducing new foods that could take a lot of time/effort/knowledge. Also, pray for me because this might be the end of nursing for us. If he needs to be on soy milk products, I'm not sure I'll be able to handle the limited diet for myself, thus putting him completely on formula. (not excited about that possibility). Pray for peace. My heart is heavy. But above all pray for God's will to be done.