Our story of tears, courage, and smiles!!!!

by Lacey
(Tracy, California )

Because I have been posting a lot lately, I wanted to share something positive to give hope to all you momma (and poppa's) out there!

My son was born premature (4 weeks), he weighed 4 pounds. He was an IUGR baby (intrauterine growth restriction). He had multiple food allergies, failure to thrive, and also a posterior soft cleft palate and hearing loss.

He also had SEVERE silent reflux.

Luckily we had a good pediatrician who took it very seriously since our LO only weighed 4 pounds when we brought him home from the NICU. We saw a GI, we got PPI's but they were not working. We went through 7 formulas before we got on the right one which was ended up being Neocate.

Researching specialty bottles for cleft palates, feeding rounds the clock every 2 hours, sleeping sitting up if you even slept at all.....and all I heard 24/7 was screaming! Screaming, screaming and more screaming!

Then I decided to take my sons health into my own hands and be my own advocate! I researched and researched and I found infant acid reflux solutions! I ordered TummyCare Max and decided to compound my own medicine using MARCI kids dosing with the help of Dr Jeffrey Phillips and Kira Kira Volpi!

That's when our lives started to change! Our little guy started to eat! More and more! And then he started to gain! And he stopped screaming!!! Started smiling!!!! A smile!!!! Wow!!!!

He grew enough to free feed and was able to sleep which meant sleep for mommy and daddy! Our whole world changed! We actually had family who wanted to babysit! I could enjoy and snuggle my son! I didn't cry and feel depressed every day! I would do anything for my son and I'm so glad I took his health into my hands and did what I knew was right for him!

Mommy's intuitions are usually right!

I to some degree became a pharmacist, a chemist, a speech therapist, became a feeding therapist, and learned sign language. Looking back at these photos of my son at 3 weeks old are scary....it's unbelievable to me how fragile and sickly he looks. His frail body and care left in our hands to figure out how to make him thrive! But with the support of this group and mommas intuition, he is a chunky, healthy, happy 15 month old now!

His surgery is complete for his palate repair and his ear tubes, his hearing is perfect, he is off PPI and TummyCare Max, reflux free, loves food! Allllll food! Haha! He is on goat milk as he still is allergic to dairy! This is what love looks like! It does get better! It's worth every minute! I'm so proud when I look at him and see what we have done!!!!!!!!! It's pretty amazing! ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤