He started a game with me
8 weeks
I woke up last night at 3 a.m. because Evan had spit up and was crying. I took him in the other room to suction out his nose because he inhaled some of it (sorry to those of you who gross-out easily) and he was crying -- screaming, really -- the whole time. I brought him back to the bed and laid him down, and while I had my back turned, he got quiet. I assumed he had fallen back asleep. When I turned around, he was looking up at me intently, and stuck his tongue out a couple of times. (We have been playing the tongue game with him for the last couple weeks, where we stick out our tongue and he sometimes imitates us). But now he was sticking it out at me. Perhaps he was just licking his lips out of hunger? I stuck my tongue out at him, and he broke out in a huge smile with twinkly eyes. He stuck his out again, and I imitated him. Again, an amazing smile.

So not only can he imitate, but he can start the game, and in the middle of the night after puking, no less! That's my boy!

reflux update
So as Jerry said in yesterday's posting, we wanted a third opinion on the reflux. The first doctor didn't want to discuss reflux at all; he dismissed the crying as colic and avoided the topic alltogether. The second doctor discussed reflux but scared us by saying the diagnostic test was invasive and the medication did bad things to baby's bone marrow. At the new mom's support group I attend, I mentioned to the lactation consultant (and semi baby genius, in my opinion) that Evan was still spitting up and crying a lot, and she asked if I had resolved the reflux issue yet. I told her about the bone marrow. She asked me, Which medication was he referring to? I said, I dunno, I didn't ask. She said that surely there must be more than one medication out there that doesn't affect bone marrow, and surely they can prescribe medicine without doing that horrid diagnostic test. I felt a little humbled that we hadn't thought of those things ourselves.

The next two days he was almost inconsolable. Sure, there were moments of happy, sparkly Evan, but for the majority of the day, it seemed he was unhappy and in pain. Not just fussy or tempermental, but in pain and expressing that pain.

That night we saw a different doctor at urgent care (the pretty one who he flirted with. Yes, we took him in claiming that he was a crier, and he had the nerve to smile and flirt the entire time). She prescribed baby Zantac. According to this doctor and the pharmacist, there are no side effects that would affect his bone marrow, just the usual rare side effects that any medication has. And it was not necessary to formally diagnose the problem. From her standpoint, he had the symptoms of reflux, and if the medication made him happier, then we should continue to give it to him. If not, then he probably did not have reflux.

We still felt weird about giving medication to such a little baby, but it doesn't seem right to watch him suffer if we can help him, either. We'll start the meds tomorrow and it might take up to a week to see improvement.