Decisions, decisions...

As I am sure anyone who has ever had to make an important decision knows, decisions are hard! Weighing the pluses and minuses, agonizing over what might happen if you make the wrong choice, teetering back and forth, sometimes between desire and what may be truly satisfying... everything about decisions is difficult...and that's just when I am making them for myself.  It is WAY harder making them for someone else, especially when you love them and want what's best for them.  The way I see it, if I make a bad decision for myself, I will suffer the consequences.  That's one thing.  Making them for a small, helpless baby who cannot yet communicate and allowing him to possibly suffer the consequences of my bad decision for him...nearly impossible.   

If  you read my last post, you may have noticed that I mentioned little Nathaniel has been crying a lot more.  I have noticed it for the past 3 weeks.  I am OK with crying for the most part, but some of his crying seems to be coming from severe discomfort or pain.  That is not so fine with me.  When I took him in for his two month doctor visit, she listed to my concern and suggested that he may have some reflux going on and prescribed Zantac for him to be taken twice a day.  At first I was relieved, thinking that he would maybe get some relief from his discomfort and I immediately went to fill the prescription.  Before giving him his first dose however, I read all of the possible side effects.  The list included things like headache, dizziness, constipation and diarrhea.  The more serious "notify your doctor immediately if..." symptoms included blurred vision, mood changes, (confusion, depression, hallucinations, severe stomach ache, fast or irregular heart beat, and severe tiredness.  When I read these side effects I thought "how would I know if any of those things were happening?"  I did some research online finding both mom's who felt the same way I did as well as research indicating that Zantac is commonly prescribed and considered safe for babies and has been for years.   Then I noticed on the bottle it says do not stop taking this without doctor supervision, which did not sit so well with me.   SOOO, I have decided to temporarily hold off on the Zantac, but I am not sure I am doing the right thing.  I am keeping a VERY detailed log including what I eat, when and how long he eats, when he cries and for how long, when he spits up and how much, how may diapers I change and what's in them etc.  I am also trying to cut out acidic things from my diet such as tomatoes, carbonated beverages and spicy foods to see if that helps.  So far, Tuesday was a fantastic day and he was a perfect little angel with hardly any crying episode, and Wednesday was the complete opposite.  From the moment he woke up he was fussy and couldn't get comfortable and cried off and on for hours.  Then today, so far he has been a perfect angel again.  When we have days like yesterday, it takes everything in me to not give him the Zantac, just wanting to give him relief somehow.  But having 2 great days makes me wonder if it's something he needs or if he just has bad days from time to time.  It's so hard to tell!  I don't want to make the wrong decision for him.  I don't want him to suffer unnecessarily, but I don't want to medicate if I am not certain that he has the condition for which he is being treated.  <sigh>

As I was thinking today about how it difficult it is to make a decision for somebody else ,I questioned: how much more difficult is it going to be watching him make the wrong decision when I know the right decision? 

Motherhood is already hard.  Cheers to you mothers out there who have been there done that and survived.  I hope to join your ranks!  In the meantime if you have any sage advice, I'm all ears.