MONTH ONE has been a rollercoaster, as the first month always is with a newborn, but Luke has thrown us with a few extra bumps and turns. About 3-4 days after Luke was born he began to develop a diaper rash. Well I tried Desitin, Triple Paste, a ton of pink swizzle, and other bum rash pastes and ointments, it just kept getting worse. It was so bad that the skin was ripping off and bleeding. I was changing his diaper constantly to try and keep a dry diaper on him and would air his bum out between changes, put him in the tub, spray his bum to clean it instead of using wipes, along with all the ointments. I even had my BIL prescribe me Nystatin. Nothing. We had to go to the pediatric unit at the hospital (that story is next) and the doctor who did Luke's circumcision was there and we asked her to take a look. Well immediately, she knew it was an acid rash due to dairy. So I went off dairy. For the first week or two of trying no dairy, it was overwhelmingly hard. Nearly everything has dairy in it so it was difficult to find what I could eat. Well after a couple weeks of that struggle, his rash began to fade and I was being as minimal as I could on the dairy. Now, he is almost 5 months and it's tremendously better. I try to keep the dairy intake down, but I will indulge in a couple slices of pizza and things like that sometimes. Some days I pay for it though when I have a few bites of ice cream. His bum doesn't flare up so bad anymore, but it does bother Luke's stomach I think, as he will have screaming fits. Only sometimes though. I guess with this type of dairy allergy, usually the baby grows out of it the older they get. So my hope is he keeps getting better and will eventually not have the allergy.
Next story. When Luke turned 2 weeks old, his head was turned to the right and I looked at the left side of his neck and noticed he had a hard lump about the size of a grape. It honestly appeared very suddenly. He went to the doctor for his 2 week check up on Wednesday, March 24 and I noticed it Friday the 26th. Well after a weekend of anxiety, I couldn't wait anymore and I knew I was going to be seeing Dr. Astle (my OB who delivered Luke) at church Sunday so I asked him and he said definitely get it looked at. So Monday the 29th we got it looked at and then went and got an Ultrasound on it, hoping for it to be some cyst or swollen lymph node. It wasn't. Tuesday morning, Luke's doctor called and sent us to get an MRI and bloodwork done. That afternoon we went to the hospital to get an MRI done on my sweet 2 week old baby. I didn't know what to think. Chase was calm and collected about it, but I was so anxious. All of our family was messaging us and sending prayers our way. We went up to the MRI waiting room where I changed into a gown to go in and Chase sat in the waiting room. We tried to time it so Luke would be hungry and tired (so he didn't have to be put under anesthesia). So I fed him right before we went in and I tried to get him to doze to sleep. It took some time to get his head all strapped in correctly and he was kind of fussy and crying for that part, but by some miracle, he calmed down and fell asleep. It took about 45 minutes and I stood there next to the MRI machine holding onto Luke's leg and praying my heart out that he would be ok and that he would also sleep and hold still so the MRI reading could be a success. He woke up the last 3-5 minutes though and began to cry, trying to move. It finished though and the Radiologist said the last little bit didn't get read because he was moving too much, but he said they got what they needed to look at. After the MRI, we headed down to get bloodwork. We said we wanted someone from the pediatric unit to come draw his blood since they know how to work with babies more, but they said we needed an appointment with peds and assured us they could do it. Well after multiple pokes and trying both arms, they failed. But while we were there, the doctor called with the results of the MRI. He had a benign tumor called a Fibromatosis Coli, and needed to go to physical therapy because the mass was going to cause torticollis. And then they said the mass would slowly start to go away after 6-12 months. We got in the car and I broke down. I was so grateful that the tumor was benign. The following day, we tried to do the blood draw again and they failed again after multiple pokes in both arms. I was so frustrated about it. Finally I said I'm doing it with the pediatric nurses. So a couple days later, we went in to draw the blood (where we also got the dairy diaper rash news) and the nurse got it first try, so I learned my lesson to go to the pediatric nurses like I wanted in the first place. The bloodwork came back normal, so we knew there were no other seen scares with the mass.
Luke's first month of life was a pretty wild ride, but through all these bumps, he was still a perfect baby. The rash didn't even seem to phase him and he was a trooper through all the poking and prodding and testing. He was just an angel, and I was so grateful that he was such a good baby through these struggles he was having.
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