2 thumbs & a dummy

I never blogged about this earlier as I didn’t want to constantly be talking about something that was already stressing me out. But now that we know what we are facing, I’m so relieved to say that I praise and thank God that she is well.

About a month ago, KR started having specks of blood in her stool. It happened so infrequently that I guess I never thought to take it seriously until it began happening a little bit more often. It would happen like once a week or not at all, so I dare say that I was perhaps in a silly way, waiting for things to get worst. Which now I think would have been disastrous had it been something serious. In my mother’s own words, ‘Don’t play-play with blood!’.

That said, we went to the GP and got a stool sample sent in only to be told that the pathologist has confirmed that there is blood in there. Hullo….I can see it with my eyes, I didn’t need someone with a microscope telling me that!! But since the GP couldn’t give us more info, he referred us to a paed and that was the appointment we went to today.

It has been a rough time waiting for this moment but when I saw the doc, I dare say that his ‘aura’ made me calm. As silly as it sounds, I was at ease with him and I was glad that we got him as our paed. O, btw, he’s a little, kinda oldish Indian man called Dr. Arun Shankar – very nice man really. Anyway, he got KR’s history from me and then he began telling us or ruling out things that it couldn’t be.

First of all, this bleeding in the stool is something fairly common with breastfed babies. Because their gut is so small, whatever they ingest get passed through as is. If I had a bleeding cracked nipple, the blood that came from it would most likely come out KR’s other end as is. It would not get digested. But since I didn’t have that, doc said that it could be breast milk colitis.

Instead, these babies are usually allergic to the cow’s milk that their mother drinks and which passes into her breastmilk. These cow’s milk proteins trigger allergic colitis, which is the name for this condition in which infants have bloody stools.

This gist of what breast milk colitis is taken from About.com.

Because of this, I have been to be on a dairy-free journey for the next month to see if this is really the cause of the bleeding and to rule out this possibility and look at the others. This means no more teh susu or yogurt or anything like that – poor Mummy!! Thank goodness I can still drink Teh O [black tea]!

I’m glad that he has let us know what we are facing and deep down inside me, I knew that if could not be something too serious as KR is thriving, as the doc put it and her growth is all on the upper percentile. As much as I do not want to jinx myself about it [knowing how we Malaysians got a million and one pantangs/dos and don'ts!], KR is doing well because I can see it with my own eyes. I’m glad that to a certain extend that I was right but I really thank God that He made it this way. God has never let my family down and I’m so thankful and grateful for that.

Anyhoo, now that we can rest a little bit, I rejoiced by getting me a big packet of some Punjabi sweets from an Indian grocer near the medical centre. And I’m loving every mouth full!!!