Ok, so all the scoop on Ryan -- there's a lot.

So Ryan's doing great in many ways -- he's pretty much sitting unassisted (still topples, but if he focuses, he stays upright quite well), cute as a button, nursing pretty well. Great!

Ok, so here's the bad stuff.

Where to start? Ok, lets start with food. As I posted here, we started him on cereal (oatmeal) a few weeks ago. He loved it, ate well. For a day. Then the poop hit the fan (sorry, couldn't resist). Actually it could have given the volume and frequency. And the mucous. And the blood. Again. Then there was the full body rash. Dr. thought it was just a stomach bug, told us to hold off on cereal, then try rice cereal.

Ok, his poops get better and we try rice. To say he didn't care for rice would be an understatement. He was literally WIPING IT OUT OF HIS MOUTH in disgust. So we thought maybe he just was still "off". Waited a few days, tried again, same thing. I seriously doubt any of it actually made it into his digestive system.

So I get the go-ahead to try him on oatmeal again, since he at least enjoyed that. Well, not this time. Seems the rice turned him off cereal all together. Sure I got some in his mouth, but I don't think he really swallowed any. Plenty on his cheeks and chin though.

And everywhere it touched, the next day he had wicked eczema. Hmmm. Well, I thought maybe it was the soap I had used didn't get totally rinsed off my boob or something. Ok. But lets wait a day on the oatmeal to see if he likes it better next time.

I did manage to sneak a couple of spoonfulls in him that he did swallow (I gave him a couple of sips of water to wash it down.) I'm sure he got some in him because it later ALL CAME BACK UP. Poor kid was puking everywhere.

Yep. Ryan appears to be allergic to oats. Shit.

Further supporting this theory is the fact that at about 2 months old I put some nice baby sunscreen on him and he totally broke out all over. Just thought it was some chemical that his soft baby skin found to be unpleasant.

Nope. The Aveeno Baby sunscreen has as its first ingredients . . . drum roll please . . . oats. Super.

So now he may be allergic to milk (don't know if it was that or the foremilk/hindmilk imbalance) and oats. What else, I fear?

So we're off to the allergist on Thursday and will see where we go from there. The pediatrician said to just wait a couple of months and try again. Uh, I don't really ever need to see Ryan vomit that much again, thanks awfully.

OK THEN, now on to sleep.

Fact: On the night of September 5, 2007 we replaced Ryan's binky no fewer than 17 times.
Fact: That 17th time was the last time a binky will ever be in his mouth.

I couldn't take it anymore, and it wasn't helping him anymore either, if he kept waking up whenever it fell out. Andrew had figured out to replace it himself by this point, but Ryan never will get the chance. I have no regrets about this.

Well, ok, I do OCCASIONALLY long for the binky. Hell, I occasionally want to pop on in Andrew's mouth. Or mine, for that matter.

He's handled it pretty well, all told, but there are a lot more tears at bedtimes and night wakings. We've been doing a modified Ferber approach, but I think we're about to go more hardline than that. I broke down and nursed him early last night, after he had been screaming for almost an hour, CERTAIN that he must be starving to death (ok, no, not rational. But the middle of the night is not a rational time for me). I'm thinking, growth spurt, the fact we give him no solids, etc.

Well, he nursed for 2 minutes and went back to bed. He just wanted some Mommy time. Which was nice, but Mommy is a much BETTER Mommy when she gets sleep.

More news as it happens . . .