Brady A. Kerr's Online Review Report Card

My daughter was doing shockingly well after being born 10 weeks early do to my having preeclampsia. She was taking breastmilk and never spitting up, but she was having a lot of episodes where she 'forgot' to breathe. I was told this was actually normal for a preemie and not to be too concerned. Then Dr. Kerr's rotation started and he decided that changing her to formula would magically make her remember to breathe. He didn't wait for permission from me before starting this. When I found out I informed him that both of my older children had a milk intolerance and had been diagnosed with MSPI. I'd been following the MSPI diet since before I got pregnant just to be careful and baby never got sick on my breastmilk her first month of life. On the formula she lost weight and stopped growing for the several weeks he kept her on it and she started having non stop gas and spitting up so much she was choking on it and the nurses had to intervene to save her. Dr. Kerr still wouldn't admit he was wrong and wouldn't admit she had MSPI. I finally reached a point where I ordered him to put her on breastmilk again, and he said he thought it was a bad idea, but would do it. I found out a week later that he was still having her recieve 2 bottles of Enfamil AR a day, and that's why she wasn't getting better. I talked to the charge nurse while I was there and inside of an easy 10 minute conversation I found out preemie babies needed more calories than term babies and breastmilk wasn't sufficient. So we started her on neocate for the extra calories, a special formula made for babies with intolerances. She was still spitting up so they decided the problem was of course my breastmilk. What she'd been on for the first month and never got sick on. I realized at this point I was never going to win against people absolutely determined to feed her formula at any and all costs. So they started her on neocate only, no real milk at all. Then they decided to try thickening it with rice cereal, so maybe it wouldn't come back up so terribly. It gave her bloody stool, they said it was probably the breastmilk that she was still working out of her system. My first daughter had bloody stool because of adding rice cereal before I learned how awful an idea it is to add cereal to baby formula. I told them, but they insisted it was the breastmilk. Eventually they realized that on the rice cereal in neocate she was spitting up worse than ever, not just the bloody stool. So they took her off that. At 40 weeks corrected age she was finally allowed to be administered a reflux medicine. She improved drastically and finally came home a month after she had stopped having her forgetting to breathe episodes. At home I am now slowly and carefully switching her back to breastmilk and she is already showing signs of improving. Less gas and less spitting up. It will be a while before my poor girl is completely recovered from what Dr. Kerr did to her.