The Cycle

What goes up, must come down. I mean 'out.'



We've entered "the cycle." No not cycle break, but something just as sinister. It's the "stuff the mouth, cough, choke, gag, and vomit extensively" cycle. Moosie had frequent chest infections when he was a baby, he also choked and gagged a lot, and he vomited a lot. Throw in the strange constipation (think no pooping for days and then shooting linked sausages out!) and the hives from an unknown egg allergy, and you had what amounted to failure to thrive.

Once I quit working and Moose no longer went to daycare, illnesses started to decrease, weight began to slowly accumulate (on both of us). Prior, we didn't realize there was a cycle. It was all so mushed and squished together, we couldn't separate the symptoms from the cause.

In the past two or three weeks, partly in thanks to being back into a school-like setting, Moosie has had some type of lung irritation, then strep, and now a lung infection. For the past three weeks Moosie has been stuffing his mouth, coughing, then choking, then gagging, and then disposing of all previous nourishment. Before he stuffs his mouth we encourage small bites and to chew, but even so the food gets wadded up. Typically Moosie eventually chews and swallows all of the food. But when you throw a cough in there, well, that just messes everything up.

I have gotten really good at holding out my hands for Moosie to dislodge all of his food. I've also gotten pretty good at flipping him upside down and dislodging anything stuck in a spit second. And yes, I've also gotten pretty good at cleaning up raunchy vomit.

I'm not doing so well with Moosie losing weight. I don't like the cycle. Not at all.