Soooooooooo Good!!!

Our little boy has been soooooooo good lately that sometimes I wonder if we have the right child. We have been enjoying a happy boy - eats good, plays nicely and hardly cries. It's hard to believe that such a transformation could come pretty much overnight, but we are thoroughly enjoying it as we're not sure how long it will last. It's been a long time since he's been this good for this length of time.

After a long weekend of fevers we seen the doctor on Tuesday. He had a bit of a red throat and a bit of a red ear but nothing that really suggested it would be causing these fevers. Given he'd had high fevers for 4 days we decided to try antibiotics and see if they helped. The next day the fevers were better and a few days later Matthew began to eat and was a happy content little boy. This triggered a new thought, as he did the same thing last time we put him on antibiotics for his ear infection. Last time it lasted for 4-5 days of eating and being good and then he went back to his old cranky not-eating self.

This time I decided to see the doctor with a happy, content child. I wanted to see what his ears looked like when he's happy, for fear that 5 days later he would be cranky again and I'd never know if his ears reached a point of being "good". As I suspected, the ears looked good but she could see scarring and white on the ear drum, which indicates that he's had reoccuring or lots of ear infections. We know he had one in January and we put him on antibiotics then. I cannot remember what the doctors thought of his ears the next time we seen them, whether they appears all better or still slightly infected. And we've seen doctors often enough between January and April that if they thought his ears seriously infected they would have treated them. Since it was not something we thought about or were concerned about we begin to wonder if they "appeared" slightly infected or a bit red but were actually bothering him far more then they appeared to be. In April he developed another full-fledge ear infection which we put him on antibiotics for and for the tail end of the antibiotics he was a happy and content boy and then went back to his old self. We didn't really clue in to this being a sign as each time we went back to the doctors they said his ears were still slightly red or bulging but not bad enough to warrant antibiotics. So we have no idea whether his ears actually looked completely better during those 4-5 days he acted better.

So we've thoroughly enjoyed the last 10 days or so of having a "normal" content 10 months old. Although his eating is not completely consistent it is faaaarrrrrr better then it was, he even smacks his lips to tell you he's hungry. These content days have also helped us to establish a better bottle routine and we haven't had any issues with him "sipping" and then refusing to drink. We've got our fingers crossed that the ears explains his refusal to eat and drink. Unfortunately it doesn't explain everything, but we're quite happy to leave those other issues (vomitting, rash) alone if they don't resurface. We are no longer giving him the reflux medication as he seems well enough without it. The only reason we might consider trying it is because he continues to have this gagging, choking, coughing thing happening near the end of drinking his bottle ... but as long as he stays the way he is now there's no reason to. We may still have some allergy issues to deal with, but as long as he keeps eating well we'll finally be able to work through some of them. All and all things are looking much brighter!!