Our Story

Just hours old, my little boy seemed unsettled. Looking back now, I realise that something wasn't right for him then. He was uncomfortable from the very beginning. He was a planned c-section and we were deep in a second lockdown for COVID. When he was born, I wasn't able to go with him for his newborn checks, they had to take him alone. I was told he'll be gone for 20-30minutes and I hoped I could finally try and get a little bit of rest. However, they were back within 5 minutes with a screaming, red faced baby, his whole little body was crunched up, stiff and tense. The midwife at the time said "Well  mom he has some lungs on him!" She went on to explain they had to bring him back because he was so unsettled. Later they decided to do the new born checks while he was on me, I would be told he was healthy and he had no oral ties. Over the next few weeks, he began to come out in a rash all over his face, I was told repeatedly this was milk spots and very normal. 

Breastfeeding had its own challenges, I was told that my latch was great despite my nipples feeling raw and bleeding, in particular the one side. He would feed better on one breast, I would constantly ask the health-visitors and I was told "it's normal", that they'll toughen up but to try shields which didn't seem to help and  in fact, made Louie's symptoms worse. I struggled to pump quickly enough or during feeds, mainly because feeding was so stressful and time consuming. After getting mastitis twice I decided breastfeeding wasn't working for us, I was sad we'd only made it to 8 weeks in our breastfeeding journey, I felt like I'd failed as a mom.

Bottle feeding didn't seem to help, in fact, everything got worse! Many people told me, a bottle will fill him up and help him including health professionals, but it didn't. I was feeling so lost and isolated. One day we went for a walk, I was pushing him in the pushchair chatting to my friend when I looked down he was staring at me eyes wide open arms stiff and looking grey in colour.  I got him out in a total panic and blew on his face, all of a sudden he took in a huge breath and screamed! I was so unsure of what had just happened I thought I'd imagined it all and was losing my mind. This happened another two times over the next few weeks. No health professionals knew why or what had happened to him, I later learnt he possibly had something called Sandifer's Syndrome.

As time went on he became more and more unsettled. We became more and more at a loss as to how to console our baby, online googling ideas seemed repetitive. The doctor suggested we try baby Gaviscon, this only seemed to add to his symptoms, next Omperazole, and at our wits' end, we reluctantly agreed. This seemed to help at first but then things got so much worse as the dose kept growing. The rash was getting more intense across his whole body! His other symptoms worsened.  

I was told that for babies with reflux they can benefit from weaning early. When we got to 5 months we began to wean, things seemed to escalate further. At 8 months we went private for allergy testing which gave us some answers but didn't solve everything. Still at a loss, this is when I found one of the baby reflux ladies who really helped guide us to the root cause. My little boy has oral ties and different allergies along with other things, once we were able to understand how to support correctly and why everything was happening things changed dramatically for him and us but by this point he was 14months old! This is why i'm passionate about helping other parents in a similar position, I don't want anyone to go through what we did for as long as we have.

If you can relate to my story don't wait let's talk, get in touch.

Sarah x