Poor little Jonas. His head is spinning. He's turning the color of pea soup. His usually placid (and slightly dopey) face, with the tip of his tongue just peeking out of his lips and his hand curled up next to his head, reddens, squishes up and stretches out with rage and discomfort. He kicks out his legs and arches his back and writhes.
Then, sometimes one minute after nursing and sometimes over an hour later out of nowhere, he opens his mouth and throws up. It's not just regular curdled spit up - this is full-out puke, throttling out of his mouth. It looks like everything he's eaten in the past 24 hours coming out. It's a little scary that one eight pound creature can empty his stomach with such force - for me, though not for Jonas, who pukes and then looks around, wide-eyed and peaceful, while I wipe up the mess that's covered everything from my hair to the kitchen floor. Soon he drifts off to dreamland and releases adorably mouse-like squeaks and flashes a dimpled, toothless grin.
Apparently, it's reflux.
Axel was a fussbudget; he could spit up and cry with the best of them, for hours and hours and hours and hours. But he didn't even come close to Jonas' powers in the puke department. Actually, I don't think that Axel's really thrown up in his 20 months on the planet (yes, I'm knocking heavily on wood as I write this). Apparently, Jonas gets this from me, as my mom's reported that I regulary emptied my stomach as a baby, a tendency I unfortunately continued as I grew up. Given the way Jonas made me sick to my stomach for a good nine months, I should't be surprised that he came equipped with a wacky digestive system.
We're in the wait and see phase of monitoring the condition, trying to modify Jonas' position and feeding schedule to lessen the pain and the puke. I've tucked a rolled-up towel under the mattress to keep his head elevated. We're keeping him upright longer after he eats. I'm meticulously tracking his wet and dirty diapers (an aside: newborns - they sure do poop a lot, don't they? Pound for pound, Jonas is doing his best to outcrap the elephants at the zoo), and crossing all my fingers and toes that his weight gain looks good at his upcoming check up.
I'm trying to get him to nurse more often, though this technique is not working so well. When he's decided it's time to sleep, he simply won't open his mouth to latch. I undress him, change his diaper, rub his face with a wet cloth, poke him in the ear, and he'll protest and wiggle and crack one eye open to give me his most fierce screw you look (not very fierce, as it's accompanied by a half-lip curl that makes him look like a shrunken ancient elf doing his best Elvis impression). Then he pinches his lips together, turns his head away, and goes back to sleep. I've spent thirty minutes trying to wake the kid and gotten him to nurse for three minutes. It seems that he'd rather gorge himself and puke than eat a smaller amount more often. I hope this eating style is not a sign of things to come.
