Mother's Day and Cooper update

So, this was my first official Mother's Day! I have spent so many Mother's Days planning for my mom and putting together the family get together. It was honestly really nice to be on the other side of that awesome day! The day started out amazing. Chris cooked breakfast while I spent some quality mommy time with the boys. As the day went on though, we started to get more and more concerned. Cooper was eating ALL the time and spitting up at least half to all of what he was eating. By the end of the day, he was crying so much because he was in pain from all of the acid coming back up. It was so pitiful! He finally went to sleep though and my relaxing started to begin. Chris set up the fire pit outside and we watched the fire and had a glass of wine with mom and dad. We talked about what happened this time last year and what an amazing 12 months it has been.

This time last year, we were having our leftover eggs thawed out and put in. We didn't have any hope of actually becoming pregnant since we were told it may only be about a 20% chance we would have one child let alone two! And, against all odds, God delivered on his promise and made me a mom of my two precious little boys! And, to top it all off, we did that on my parent's anniversary. So, this year we celebrated their 38 years, Mother's Day and our anniversary of me really becoming a mom. What a special day! Here is a picture of my special boys and me...

I just love this picture because Cooper looks like he is saying "Excuse me. Can we start again?"

To back up a step...For those of you who weren't aware, Cooper has been not gaining weight. He is officially 2 pounds lighter than his brother. So, we are very concerned. So, that is why we were so concerned on Mother's Day. It looks like he is able to keep in enough fluids to maintain his weight and keep hydrated. But, there just isn't anything else that he can keep in his stomach to help him grow. We have been to countless doctor appointments to figure out what is going on.

As of today, we went to see a Pediatric GI specialist. She agrees with our primary pediatrician that it may be a milk protien allergy. This apparently is different from him being lactose intolerant. And, there is milk protein in almost everything I eat! So, I am having to really cut back my diet. I can eat basically only meat, veggies and eggs. We also changed his formula that we supplement with to a hypoallergenic formula too. It takes about 2-3 weeks for us to be able to see any change with this too. So, we won't know if this is the real problem until it has time to work. This unfortunately is our best bet at this time. Because he is so small, they really don't want to do any more tests than we need to. So, we are going to try this and if it doesn't work we will move on to more testing as needed.

So, please keep Cooper in your prayers. He is an amazing little boy that is so advanced in so many ways, but we are concerned that if he doesn't start growing it could impact him long term. We are all hoping that this is a simple milk protein allergy. Once it gets out of my system, he should start to get better.