Where is my Angel?!

So Austin is gone...and some monster child has taken over his body and possessed him!!!  He is no longer my little angel and I have nothing to blame for it except maybe his tummy!!  It's become very frustrating over the last few weeks.  It started the week he began waking during the night to eat, then last week he just never seemed to get back on track and ended the week with some major stomach problems.  He was constipated on Wednesday, by Thursday he was having very small bowel movements (skid marks according to his teacher) and then by Friday, he opened up the flood gates and pooped like he's never pooped before.  The school called me at work on Friday afternoon to let me know that he had already had five poops - typically if they have five poops that resemble diarrhea, they send them home.  They said his poops were not quite runny enough to send him home, but they wanted me to be aware in case I felt like I needed to call the doctor before the weekend started.  The last time he had a lot of poops in one day, the doctor said to call if he had 10 or more.  That seemed pretty excessive at the time but by the end of the day Friday, he had pooped eight times and had gone through six outfits.  Wow.

So you can imagine that his disposition was just not normal.  I guess mine wouldn't be either if I pooped on myself all day.  I felt so bad for him on Saturday because it was just obvious that he didn't feel good.  He wasn't running a fever or showing any other symptoms that indicated something else was wrong, but by this time he was only eating an ounce or two at a time, or completely refusing the bottle all together.  I was trying not to get too worried about this and told myself that if I was having the stomach issues that he was having, I probably wouldn't want to eat either.  I knew if I called the doctor he would tell me that he will eat when he's hungry and ready to.  I think he had about five poops on Saturday and he spent the night with Justin's grandparents that evening.  Unfortunately, their time with him wasn't exactly fun, as Grandad was up most of the night with Austin.  He said he just wouldn't go back to sleep and was just fussy and whiny.  Par for the course lately.

Their power randomly went out around lunch on Sunday so we went over to pick Austin up so he wouldn't get too hot.  He had started eating a little more from his bottles and had finished all his carrots at lunch.  By late Sunday afternoon, he had the nastiest, orange poop I've ever seen.  Even though it was disgusting, it made me feel better to see that what he had eaten a few hours early had already made its way out, meaning he wasn't stopped up anymore!!  So I felt really good going into dinner time at 6pm.  We are now on 2nd foods, so lots of different combinations and bigger containers.  On the menu for the night was pears and mangos.  Austin had gotten almost the entire container down before he seemed to not want anymore.  This is usually when I make his rice cereal because even when he acts like he's full, he seems to find room for rice cereal.  I'm still not sure why he loves that stuff so much.  Well, one bite of rice cereal and he started gagging.  And gagging, and gagging until he finally puked.  Anwhen I say puked, I mean PUKED.  It just kept gushing out and it was like all I could do was just stare at it and wait until he was finished!!  It was a total mess by the time we finished and called it quits.

So who knows....it may just take him some time to get his tummy back to normal and it may take some time to get back to his old schedule.  Regardless, I want my sweet baby boy back!!  I hate it when he doesn't feel good, it just breaks my heart knowing I can't do anything about it.  As much as it sucks for Justin and I when he is off schedule and not himself, I know it's part of it...but that still doesn't make it any easier to deal with.  Hopefully it won't take him much longer to get back to normal!!  (Oh, and sorry for all the poop talk....it becomes normal conversation once you have a child.