Reflux is Back

I am so discouraged.  For the past month we have been trying to get Leah to sleep flat in her crib, not on the sleeping wedge.  We wanted to do this because (1) she is 6 months old, (2) she wants to move around a bit, and (3) she cannot self-soothe on the wedge which results in a lot of nighttime soothing for BA and me.  So about 3 weeks ago, we decided to take her off the wedge.  She did not take to this well.  She fussed/cried all night for the first week, and then she started coughing all night.  After about 30 minutes of coughing, one of us would give up and get out of bed to pick her up and soothe her.  The minute we picked her up, she'd throw-up all over us.  This week we have spent the hours of 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. every night cleaning up the mess.  There would be spit-up everywhere - on her crib, our comforter, our carpet, her sleeper, our clothes.  It is terrible.  And this week she started refusing her bottle.  At this rate, I'm not even sure how much she is eating.  We can only get her to eat about 4 ounces at a time and she is literatlly throwing-up every other bottle.  I'm estimating that she is eating half of what she was just two weeks ago.  We called the doctor today after she threw-up twice in four hours and he put her on Prevacid.  I was so excited about this - despite the $180 price tag for 30 pills - hopeful for any improvement.  She took it a lot better than that nasty Zantac she was on, and she ate 4 ounces at dinner, but then 10 minutes later she threw it up.  BA ran to the bathroom and held her in the bathtub while she threw-up two more times.  

Aside from how worried I am about Leah, this has turned our life upside down.  We get thrown-up on at least 3 times a day.  It's disgusting.  We are constantly doing laundry.  BA and I are averaging about 3-4 hours of sleep a night for the past 3 weeks.  I am sick and he is having allergic reactions due to a weakened immune system.  We are lucky to have my Dad visiting us and helping out but even he isn't immune from the mess.  He hadn't been here 24 hours before Leah spit-up all over him during a morning feeding.
 
And I am constantly trying to figure out what to do next.  I am a problem-solver by nature.  I will sit awake at 5 a.m. and google "reflux" looking for a solution that we haven't already tried.  I incessantly pose new ideas to BA and he's seriously tired of my problem-solving because everything we try seems to fail.  But I can't stop thinking about solutions and formulating action plans.  It's just so confusing because we thought the reflux had eased up a bit when  just last month she seemed to be doing well, spitting up less.  And now everything is back, worse than ever before.

Through all of this, Leah has had the best attitude.  She will throw-up her entire bottle and then look up at us and smile.  She is just the sweetest baby and it kills me that I can't help her.  And I suspect that most of her aversion to naps and the non-stop crying that we were fighting has to do with reflux.  She doesn't want to lay down when the acid is just going to cause her pain.  I feel so bad for getting frustrated at her when she won't sleep but we are all so tired and desperately need the rest.   

So I don't really know where to go from here.  We are going to keep her on the wedge and give the Prevacid a try this week.  Hopefully this will settle her stomach and stop the constant throwing-up.  I am going to add rice cereal to her bottle and we are starting solids soon.  I can only hope for some improvement.