Health

Well life has certainly been a whirlwind lately.  As this is the busiest time of year for me at my full time job finalizing preparations for my upcoming fundraising events—4 in the next 3 weeks—I haven’t taken the opportunity to write.  We’ve also had a lot of things going on with both my health and Huck’s that have kept us busy running to various appointments; nothing serious, but cause for a lot of Dr. appointments and weight checks, nonetheless.

We found out about 2 months ago that my thyroid levels were way out of whack because I had been watching my thyroid get bigger and more visible in my neck for a few weeks and finally asked my mom if she thought I should call my doctor.  Her immediate response as she looked at me from across the room and could see it move when I swallowed was a resounding “YES!”  For those of you who don’t know, you shouldn’t be able to see your thyroid at all.  Now, my Doc is not the easiest person to get in to see, but I made the call first thing the following morning, which happened to be a Friday and was lucky enough to be able to get an appointment for the upcoming Tuesday.  After seeing the Dr. and being assured that I did the right thing in calling, my labs were scheduled for later that week and an ultrasound for the following week.  Based on all of these test results, my Dr. concluded that it was most likely Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis which will eventually lead to Hypothyroidism and referred me on to an Endocrinologist for a second opinion.  Two weeks later I was able to see the specialist and was put on medication to hopefully regulate my hormones.  Over the course of this process I was a rollercoaster of emotions—fear and worry initially that it could be something really bad like cancer; sadness that I was most likely going to have to be on medication for the rest of my life when I had worked so hard over the past year and a half to get off and stay off of any regular medications through my regular yoga practice; relief that it was an easily treatable disease and actually very common, especially after pregnancy. 

Now you may be asking the same thing all of the doctors asked me numerous times—didn’t I have any symptoms??  Well, folks, the symptoms of hypothyroidism and thyroiditis are very similar to what your body naturally goes through after pregnancy, extreme tiredness, dry skin, feeling chilled and hair loss, so naturally, not having gone through postpartum changes before, I thought these things were normal.  Especially since I had a newborn at home who had not been the greatest sleeper, and I had sort of adapted to feeling tired all of the time.  Had I known or had one of the doctors asked me about my milk supply, perhaps I might have had a different response to their questions about what symptoms I had been having.  It wasn’t until the day after my endocrinologist appointment that I discovered/realized that my milk supply was probably being affected by my crazy thyroid levels.

All while this had been going on with my health, we also found out that Huck had not really been gaining much weight from his 2 month to his 4 month check-up.  This fact combined with his chronic spitting up that we had been trying to get to the bottom of with the doctor, prompted our physician to call for an Upper GI and refer him on to a pediatric gastroenterologist.  I think it also maybe helped that when we were at his 4 month appointment and the nurse was taking his measurements and vitals he spit up on me and she was able to see the consistency of it and the fact that it was projectile, causing her to say “Is that what it always looks like?  That’s not normal”.  This is exactly what I had been trying to tell them for the past 4 months!  It felt good to finally have someone validate what we had been going through for such a long time.  The Upper GI at the local hospital concluded that he did not have pyloric stenosis or reflux.  I found it hard to believe that they thought he didn’t have reflux though based on his history.

It was at the gastroenterologist appointment the day after my endocrinologist appointment that the doctor, after many probing questions about both Huck’s and my health, and me mentioning that I had just started taking a thyroid medication the day before, that a light bulb went off in the Dr.’s head.  He immediately asked about my milk supply, and I let him know that I did feel like maybe I wasn’t making enough because I would pump every 2 hours and still barely have enough milk to send with Huck to daycare the following day, let alone have enough to build much of a supply in my freezer.  I guess I just thought this was normal…after all, it was normal for me; or at least it had been for a few months, I realize in hindsight.  The Dr. was ecstatic that he found this information out from me and was eager to see how the next few weeks would go for us, certain that we would start to see some changes in Huck because of this change in not only my milk supply hopefully, but also perhaps the consistency and nutrients in my milk.  He did not seem to think much else was going on with Huck’s health, but still wanted to do another Upper GI at the children’s hospital because there were some things he couldn’t quite tell from the one done at our local hospital.  He did think that he probably had some reflux based on my explanation of Huck’s behavior and how often he spit up and the definition of reflux, but didn’t think that the medication Huck had been taking for it would do much to help with it.  So in 3 weeks we would go through the UGI process again and have a follow-up appointment with the specialist.  I should also say that, as many of you know, our little munchkin has been a very fussy/colic baby, and by this point he was finally starting to grow out of that, so the Dr. also thought that maybe in 3 weeks we would see even more of a personality change in him because he would be that much older.

So now a 5 ½ months, we have definitely seen a personality change in our little man, and I’m pleased to say that the consistency of his spit up has changed which also makes me a bit more encouraged.  It makes me believe that much of the problems we may have been having with our precious baby were due to the hormones in my body trying to regulate themselves, yet being unsuccessful.  After the first week of thyroid medication, I felt as though my milk supply had greatly improved, but by the 2^nd week and continuing to now, I am questioning it a bit, even after adding Fenugreek to my diet.  So although it is a little better, I’m not convinced my hormones are where they should be yet, and I don’t go back for another month to have them checked again.  We also started rice cereal this past week; I wanted to wait until closer to 6 months to do this, but am hoping that the extra calories at night will help him gain a little since from 4 to 5 months he still struggled a bit to gain weight.  We go tomorrow for the 2^nd UGI and follow-up with gastroenterologist.  So as the past 2 months have been quite interesting for us, we are grateful each day for the health we do have and that even with little weight gain for our baby, he is still thriving, alert and growing developmentally.  I’ll keep you posted on how things go.  Thanks for reading!