A day at the beach with my kids used to be a pipe dream for me.
I remember the first time I brought my daughter to the beach. She was about 8 months old, we were beginning to get our heads above water with her silent reflux. I desperately wanted to do the things all my ante natal friends were doing.
I put on a brave face. Bundled Sunflower into the car and drove for an hour to the beach. That was hell enough because for the second half of he journey I was stuck in solid traffic and she was screaming in pain tied down in her car seat.
When I got there, I got her out, fed her at the car because I couldn’t find my friends and I felt alone and helpless again. People walked past me observing this mum who couldn’t appease her screaming baby.
After that, I put her into her carrier and we wandered up and down the beach to find the rest of the kids tucking into their lunches. And the talk of “X now eats 3 meals and snacks and wants more food”…. how well everyone else’s baby was doing on their solids, how they were sleeping loads more, how life was easier, mum felt freer blah blah blah….
I couldn’t have felt more alone.
And time has taught me that what we really need to give ourselves is a break. We need to know that it’s okay to be the “over protective” mum in other people’s eyes because they don’t know what our life is actually like.
Being the mum of a baby who struggles with reflux and food allergies is hard enough. I am here to make your journey easier.
You see, over 67% of parents of babies who have reflux struggle, and have told me that they feel they have had inadequate support from their primary health carers.
And with post natal depression on the rise, and doctors, consultants and paediatricians dismissing the genuine concerns of worried parents, with babies being left to cry and scream in pain and it being inferred that “it is normal”, we have to take a stand. We have to do something different.
Because there is a way.
In babies, reflux is a symptom, each and every time. Despite the name (gastro oesophageal reflux disease), it is not a disease. It has no pathology. It is a symptom. Let’s understand the cause (which is not a weak lower oesophageal valve because I argue that all babies have this).
As with all my clients, we figure out the cause, we treat this and the problems miraculously disappear almost overnight. New children are born. Calmer children. Toddlers who are happy to spend time away from mum socialising. Happier lying down. Happier sleeping. Sleeping better. Sleeping and getting rest.
There is massive change to be made.