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Show Notes: In this video, we sit down with Stacey Short, a mother who has raised a medically fragile child and found herself losing her sense of self as she took on the responsibility of caring for her son with Common Variable Immune Deficiency (CVID). Stacey shares her experiences, insights, and struggles as a parent of a medically fragile child, including how she coped with the stress, uncertainty, and emotional toll of caring for a child with complex medical needs. Stacey now uses her experiences to help other women who may be going through similar struggles. She specializes in helping women aged 35 and above who secretly hate life a little too often and have become the person they never thought they would turn into. These women are having trouble recognizing their reflections, and now find themselves yelling at, resenting, and avoiding their loved ones. In this interview, Stacey offers valuable advice and support for parents of medically fragile children, as well as for anyone who may be struggling with their own identity and sense of self. She shares practical tips on how to maintain self-care, prioritize your own well-being, and seek out support systems that can help you through challenging times. Her story is one of resilience, compassion, and hope, and her insights will be valuable to anyone who is navigating the challenges of caregiving and parenting. Interested in working with Stacey? Book a free discovery call and find out if her coaching program is a good fit. Be sure to mention you heard about it on the Water Prairie Chronicles for a discount! https://calendly.com/afewshortminutes Stacey loves to connect! Find her at: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/coachstaceyshort Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/afewshortminutes_coaching_/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afewshortminutes/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@stacey_coaches Connect with Us: https://linktr.ee/waterprairie Support this channel: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/waterprairie Music Used: “LazyDay” by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Artist: http://audionautix.com/

A Parent’s Honest Account About CVID

Show Notes:

In this video, we sit down with Stacey Short, a mother who has raised a medically fragile child and found herself losing her sense of self as she took on the responsibility of caring for her son with Common Variable Immune Deficiency (CVID). Stacey shares her experiences, insights, and struggles as a parent of a medically fragile child, including how she coped with the stress, uncertainty, and emotional toll of caring for a child with complex medical needs.

Stacey now uses her experiences to help other women who may be going through similar struggles. She specializes in helping women aged 35 and above who secretly hate life a little too often and have become the person they never thought they would turn into. These women are having trouble recognizing their reflections, and now find themselves yelling at, resenting, and avoiding their loved ones.

In this interview, Stacey offers valuable advice and support for parents of medically fragile children, as well as for anyone who may be struggling with their own identity and sense of self. She shares practical tips on how to maintain self-care, prioritize your own well-being, and seek out support systems that can help you through challenging times. Her story is one of resilience, compassion, and hope, and her insights will be valuable to anyone who is navigating the challenges of caregiving and parenting.

Interested in working with Stacey? Book a free discovery call and find out if her coaching program is a good fit. Be sure to mention you heard about it on the Water Prairie Chronicles for a discount!

https://calendly.com/afewshortminutes

Stacey loves to connect! Find her at:

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/coachstaceyshort
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/afewshortminutes_coaching_/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afewshortminutes/
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@stacey_coaches

Connect with Us: https://linktr.ee/waterprairie

Support this channel: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/waterprairie

Music Used: “LazyDay” by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Artist: http://audionautix.com/

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Meet Today’s Guest:

Stacey Short is a compassionate individual who grew up as an Air Force BRAT, constantly seeking to help others live a better life. With a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Oklahoma, Stacey’s journey took a turn when she discovered that her newborn son was medically fragile in 2005. She returned to the service industry to provide better care for his medical needs. In 2016, Stacey experienced the tragic loss of her baby brother to suicide, which plunged her into a dark place where she struggled to live.

With the help of health professionals and medication, Stacey was able to crawl out of the depths and, in 2020, she decided to fully embrace her calling once again. She pursued certifications in health, life, and clarity, and now helps women who have lost themselves in the roles of life and do not recognize themselves in the mirror.

Today, Stacey is the proud mother of two teen boys and some spoiled pups. She understands that the process of living a purposeful and fulfilling life is ongoing, and she continues to strive to make a difference in the lives of others.

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Episode #54: What it’s Like to Raise a Medically Fragile Child with CVID

A Parent’s Honest Account About CVID

(Recorded March 2,, 2023)

Chickenpox could kill my child. So when we vaccinated my youngest against the varicella, um, we had to do it in two parts because it’s a live specimen. It’s a weakened specimen. But it’s a live specimen. So we had to watch my youngest for 30 days. 30 days for any kind of symptom that he was going to pop one chicken pock.

Because that’s normal with a varicella thing. If he started running a fever, we were to immediately separate houses. Not just room to room, but houses. But what am I supposed to do with that? How am I supposed to do that? Where am I supposed to go? You know, and it’s just those unexpected stressors.

Talk about, you know, we always talk about, we talk about a lot now lately, thankfully, the mental load of motherhood. Um, It really needs to be a more expanded conversation. It needs to be a more. Uh, prolific conversation, a more upfront conversation. Um, and then when you add on the mental load of a mother with a medically fragile child.

Where am I supposed to go if my young and then, and then I’d have to be, I’d have to choose which kid to go with. Because if I separate houses, I can’t go back to the other one because of exposure.

I mean, Sophie’s choice.

So now you have a sick child,

Truly Sophie’s choice.

Do you stay with the sick child or you do you stay with the one who is healthy but needs more protection?

Needs his mother.

Yeah. They both need mom at that point. You know?

Absolutely. And I literally cannot be in two places at once. And as much as my ex-husband was trying to help there’s just,

Well, and there’s something too with mother-son relationships too. It’s, it’s different. And there’s a strong bond there. And you’ve got two boys, so

It is,

yeah.

Mm-hmm. .

All right. Again, we’re getting into stuff that we need to talk about.

We’ll just continue talking and then you, you can record

I’m gonna do a quick intro. Let’s just, cuz we’re stopped now. So let’s go ahead and do this now.

Sure.

Um, all right. So welcome to the Water Prairie Chronicles. Our guest today is Stacey Short. I met Stacey through a Facebook group that we both belong to and she is the proud mom of two teenage boys.

And she’s gonna be sharing with us a little bit about her experience of having a child who is medically fragile and how she’s learned to work through some of the stress that she’s faced in her experiences. Um, Stacey, what else do you wanna add to that? Cuz that’s just a little tip of the iceberg of who you are.

Yeah, right. Um, I think that’s what happens when you’ve gathered 46 years on this planet . Um, I am the mom of two teen boys. They are 17 and 15. Um, I am a single mom. I’ve been divorced since 2014. I do co-parent, their dad is seven miles from here. Um, and, uh, I lost myself completely, um, in trying to keep my oldest son, his name is Bryce, trying to keep him alive.

And when I rediscovered myself again through therapy, um, and a lot of introspection, a lot of boundary setting, a lot of self-esteem work, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, um, I really wanted to go and help women. who have lost themselves in the roles, uh, the demanding roles that they play in their life. Um, I wanted to help them rediscover themselves.

I wanted to help them quiet those negative voices. I wanted to help them tap into their inner wisdom, their inner godd-ess, and, and bring that higher self forward and live in the present and not live the same day over and over and over and over again, which is what I did for about 15 years. Um, and so now I am a transformational self-love coach, um, that specializes in women who secretly hate life a little too much, a little too often.

And that’s kind of taboo. We really don’t talk about that, um, as a whole. But when you really have a, a medically fragile child or a, a child that, um, just as, as a, as a little bit more challenge and takes a little bit more of attention, um, it’s even easier to lose yourself because then not only are you a mom, but now you’re a caretaker and that is a whole different kind of role.

And, um, so I wanna help women navigate that faster. And I really wanna be the coach that I wish I had had all those years ago. And instead of living the same day for 15 years, um, maybe had honored myself a little bit more instead of trying to numb all of the pain that I was trying to avoid.

So you can tell by listening to her intro that she’s got a lot to add to us here.

So, um, so we’re gonna dig into some questions in a bit. But first of all, during this season we’ve been asking our guests to share 2 Truths and a Lie about themselves. And we’re challenging our listeners to go on to Instagram, Twitter, or in the comments of the YouTube channel, and leave your guesses of which one you think are, which of the two you think are true and which one you think is the lie.

And a week after we post this, you can check back on Instagram and see what the answer is to that. So, um, so Stacey, what are your three statements that you’re going to give us for them to guess which are true and which is the lie?

Sure. Um, the first one is I am the absolute, uh, definition of a Sagittarius. Uh, the second one is I am, um, completely healed and lived my life perfectly.

And the third one is, and I have lived in multiple states, uh, anywhere between Alaska to Germany.

Wow.

All right. This is your cue. Take a pause on this one. Go answer what you think it is and come right back to finish the rest of listening to this one. So, um, so Stacey, you have two boys. You said they’re 15 and 17, right?

And, um, and so Bryce is your oldest, is that correct?

Bryce is my oldest.

Make sure I have, have all of my details. Wait, I, I’m sorry. I was talking there. What is, what is your youngest son’s name?

Garrett. His name is Garrett.

Garrett. So Bryce and Garrett.

Mm-hmm. .

And, um, so my kids are a little bit older. Not much.

They’re 20 and 22. So we’re, we’re just a few steps ahead of you on, on that, on, on the other side of the high school graduation line. from you . Um, so for Bryce, um, he’s, he’s part of what we’ll be talking about with this. And is he okay with us discussing this?

Yeah, he, he is, um, I think he’s come to a place of, if my story can help, then why not share it?

Good for him. Good for him.

There is no embarrassment about his condition. There is no shame. Um, honestly, he doesn’t know life differently like he was born with this. Yeah. And so, um, people always kind of go, gosh, I, I don’t know how he deals with this. If you were, if you never had a TV in your, in your house, would you miss it?No. You wouldn’t know. And so he doesn’t know any differently. Um, I hurt for him because his high school experience was not my high school experience.

Um, I hurt for him because I had a job at 16 and, and we don’t even know what that looks like for him. Um, you know, just all those kinds of like little marker, those teenage markers that I really enjoyed and hated at the same time.

He really just hasn’t had that experience. Right. Um, and so I hurt for him, but he doesn’t know what he’s missing cuz he doesn’t know to miss it. And so that’s a kind of a blessing there. Um, but he talks about his condition openly.

Okay, good.

Um, he’s not embarrassed by it. He’s not, there’s no shame. Um, this is nothing that he did to himself. It’s just a weird genetic fluke. Um, and I hope. My hope for him one day is that he does something with this, just like you were sharing about your daughter earlier. Um, I hope that he at least speaks about what it’s like to live with Common Variable Immunodeficiency. Um, I think, I think that would be really empowering for him one day.

So, so you just gave us the name of what it is. So it’s Common Variable Immunodeficiency.

Immunodeficiency,

okay.

Mm-hmm. .

And is this, is it, is that the full name of it? Does it have syndrome or anything as part of it, or, I’ve never heard of it. Obviously .

Um, yeah, it’s, he’s a rare bird. He’s a rare bird. Um, when you consider rates in autism are like one in 50 for boys.

Yeah. Which for some reason those rates are high. They’re are. The ratio is lower for, for boys than girls. Um, maybe it’s just a misdiagnosis or an underdiagnosis. Kind of like now we’re figuring out with ADHD in women. Right. Uh, late diagnosis here. Yep. So, um,

he is about one in 1 million, one and a half million.

Yeah.

Um, so I live in Las Vegas and there are 2 million people here. And I know of two people in this city besides Bryce.

Oh, wow.

That live with CVID. But their CVID combination is different than his.

Okay.

So your immune system is made up of IgA, IgE, IgG and IgM generally. Um, the IgA and the IgE are generally part of like the allergy part of your immune system.

Um, IgA has dual function, but generally part of your, so if you’ve got like a wheat allergy, you’re aller allergic to dogs, it is actually your immune system kicking in. And, and, um, so that side of him is fine as far as him, his immune system goes, what isn’t okay is the bacteria and the virus fighting side of his immune system.

So he was, um, so the IgG are basically the, the soldiers. So if you go back to high school biology, right, you’ve got, um, something that attaches to the foreign in invaders in your body, and then white blood cells, the, the, the mi the macrophages come and they eat it up, right? . But how do they know to attach to those things?

Well, they’ve got like kind of generals, right? And that’s the IgM and the generals say, oh, that’s foreign. Go attach to it. So then the white blood cells can come and eat it. Well, he doesn’t really make generals and he doesn’t really make soldiers.

Okay.

So there’s no, um, signal that these things shouldn’t be here.

And even if the, what little immune system is in him does signal, there are not a lot of soldiers to go attached to it, to tell the white blood cells, Hey, here, you want to eat this guy? So, um, like for him, he doesn’t run a fever.

Okay.

He doesn’t run a fever. And that’s, that’s the first sign

His body doesn’t know, right.

His body doesn’t know. It just allows things to come in, set up, shop, hang out, invite the friends, like, yeah. Yeah. And so he’s had a lot of strange illnesses in his short. 17 and a half years on this earth. Um, the weirdest one that almost took his life, um, what is called, uh, it was called pseudomonas pneumonia.

And, um, it just came in and set up shop and hung out because his body couldn’t detect that it was there.

So as you’re explaining that, um, I have multiple sclerosis and I’m thinking the whole time, so he doesn’t have the, the immune system to fight. I have an immune system that decides to fight me instead

Correct.

And that’s the difference between you having, um, an autoimmune disease system disorder, whatever you. Syndrome. He has a primary immune deficiency. Also, not to be confused with an acquired immune deficiency. HIV type stuff. Right. And so his is truly a genetic fluke where his body, just some gene activated.

Um, my, my family is usually autoimmune. My aunt has ms, my mom has Hashimotos thyroiditis. So super familiar with those.

Um, but Bryce has gotta be, you know, the, uh, uh, the original one with, um, a primary immune deficiency.

Interesting. Yeah. Cuz I, like I said, I’ve never, never heard of this before. So this is, this is new for me.

yeah.

So the, so it’s affecting his, his health risk, how does it affect his daily life?

Yeah, his daily life. Um, , his body fights to sustain. To sustain,

Okay.

Let alone grow.

Okay.

So he never hit that growth spurt that other children hit, especially boys, right?

Yeah.

They always, they usually have this just massive growth.

He never had that. Um, he is tired a lot, a lot, um, because his body is just fighting to, to sustain.

Um, and so a lot of lethargy, a lot of low muscle tone. Um, a lot of just things of, of that nature. Um, when he does get sick, like, um, he actually had a raging ear infection last week raging. Um, normally.

If, if you don’t have a medically fragile child like Bryce, the doctors will say, um, oh, we’ll just wait it out. Cuz ear infections, they don’t really treat as much any longer. Right. They just kind of let it write, write its course. But for Bryce, you can’t, because it’ll stick around, it’ll stay, it’ll do damage, it’ll go into something else, it’ll mutate.

I mean, it’s terrible. And so I took him, or his dad took him to the doctor on a Saturday and, and an urgent care kind of call, but only to his primary. We don’t do normal urgent care clinics.

They don’t know what to do with him, . They don’t know what to do with him. Um, and so we went to Hi. He went to his doctor, and his doctor put him on some big, big sier antibiotics and some eardrops.

Um, and usually they say, oh, 24 hours and, and the antibiotics have kicked in and you should start feeling better. So that was on Saturday. It wasn’t until Thursday that he was sort of out of pain. .

And then he was still sleeping 13 and 14 hours a day, and then still being tired, still wanting to take naps.

Um, and so he doesn’t go to a traditional high school Right. Because of reasons like that.

Oh, yeah.

Uh, he goes to school Wednesdays and Thursdays from 11:45 to 3:30. That’s it. Okay. Um, I, yeah. And, and also the exposure into,

Well, that’s, that’s what I was thinking,

that level of Yeah. Thousand kids in a school. I’m just asking for trouble at that point.

Yeah. One sneeze near him. Yeah.

Especially with Corona. Especially with COVID. Yeah. So we’ve been isolated for three a long time now, and unfortunately my youngest, we don’t talk about this, the side effects or this bystanders. Bystanders. Right. And so, like my, my youngest poor Garrett, he gets the brunt of this too.

because he can’t , he can’t go to school. Um, Bryce’s Immunologist has explicitly advised against it because if Garrett goes to school and is exposed to a thousand kids, then we might as well go to school and be exposed to a thousand kids because Garrett’s gonna bring it home and, and my son is not protected.

Um, and so Garrett’s had to homeschool for these last, even when they went back to full in person, he couldn’t go.

And so he’s isolated because of it. And I just, I feel terribly for, for him because he’s got like this, he’s missing that peer-to-peer relationship, those social relationships that I just absolutely loved in high school.

Right? I still have real best friends from high school 30 years later and, and my kids missed out on that. And that really makes me sad for them. It really makes me sad for them. It does.

I think a lot of our kids, um, their tho those that were in school since Covid, so the last few years, especially at the high school level, their, their path is their path.

But it’s not what you and I had just because the world changed during all that time. And on top of that, now you also have, whether it was COVID or not, would the boys have been able to go to high school?

Yeah. Um, questionable at best. Yeah. Even if Covid wasn’t exac around, that would’ve been questionable at best.

Um, I think that Garrett definitely could have gone, but, but Bryce has always missed a lot of days in school.

Um, a lot of days. And so we, I mean, he did go to, he went to middle elementary. He did go to middle.

I mean, he, he is, he has been in school. Um, but he missed like 40, 40 days is that’s, that’s kind of average for him, for missing that much school.

And so, um, well the school did provide a tutor, uh, once a, for every eight hours that he missed, he got an hour, hour of, uh, special education tutoring. Um, and so we did take advantage of those school, um, programs. But it’s not enough. It’s not enough. And it doesn’t make up for the peer-to-peer relationships ever.

Right, right.

Ever. So, um, even if Covid hadn’t been around, his high school life would’ve been stunted, just like his middle school and elementary schools lives were not full and robust like mine was.

It’s, it’s, it’s interesting watching them grow up , you know,

Well, and then if you, you know, if you talk about ADHD, one of my children has rejection sensitive dysphoria, part of it.

Yeah.

And so that really does affect how he manages expectations, how he manages feedback, how he manages. ,

Yeah.

Life. Um, and so that adds a whole other component to conflict resolution. Um, and I don’t really know. That is out of my scope. That is out of my scope. As, as, as scoped as I am, I’m not scoped there. So,

But you’re supposed to be proficient at all of this

Ah, believe me, I tell myself that. All day, every day, or I used to. So yeah. That perfectionistic pattern is, uh, that was an ugly one to break, believe me. Yeah, absolutely.

But this is why having these conversations are important though, because, you know, we’re chatting right now, but someone listening to this is going to hopefully realize that they don’t have to have all the answers either. You know, none of us have all these answers.

Oh God. No. Nobody does. Nobody does. But ask questions. Please ask questions.

You are empowered to ask questions. I I want you to a, ask questions. I want you to advocate for yourself. I want you to use your words. I didn’t. And I was miserable because I thought I had to have all the answers. And I was the go-to girl. I, I got it.

No problem. I’ll handle it. Give it to me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, if you want something done, do it yourself or want something done. Right. Do it yourself. No, That is a perfectionistic pattern that does nobody service and we need to let it go. Um, but I also didn’t feel empowered to ask questions because when I brought Bryce to the doctors at three months of age and said he’s only sleeping 45 minutes at a time.

And I am ragged and I have to hold him in order for him to sleep. and, you know, non co-sleeping parents don’t advocate for that. Co-sleeping parents do. I don’t care. I was just tired. I was tired.

Yeah. And his doctors dismissed me because I was a first time mom. And so they thought I was just being neurotic.

They didn’t trust that my instincts were kicking in. Um, they didn’t trust that I was, I’m the oldest grandchild, children of 12, or the oldest child of three, or that I started babysitting kids in my neighborhood at 10. None of that mattered to the medical professionals that I was taking him to. Mm-hmm. , in fact, at like six months of age.

I took him to the pediatrician again because he had strep throat and an ear infection again.

At, at six months of age. At six months. Okay. That’s supposed to be impossible.

Okay. That’s supposed to be impossible is what they tell you. He was like, the first year he was alive, he had 12 positive strep tests and 24 appointments for ear infections alone.

Just for those two reasons alone, there were months that we were at a doctor’s office, an urgent care, an ER, something for weeks on end, Saturday and Sunday included. So, um, anyway, I was living in this small town in Oklahoma, which is where my parents are from. I’m, and um, I took him to his established pediatrician and I said, I’m watching his six to nine month clothes get bigger on him.

and I don’t understand why. Do something. And what his pediatrician told me, I will never forget these words. My mom was in there with me, is she patted me on my hand and said, oh, Stacey, white middle class children under doctor’s care just don’t die in this day and age.

I’ve never felt so dismissed in my life. And that was the beginning of not using my voice because why would I?

Clearly I was overreacting. Clearly. It took him throwing up so violently that it came out of his tear ducts. For her in the office in front of her three months later to go. Oh, okay.

And at by that time I was so sick and tired of being dismissed and watching my kid die. Literally. Yeah. Um, that I said, you are out of your scope. You are in over your head. We need to be in a children’s hospital. I don’t care if I have to drive Kansas City, St. Louis, Dallas, I don’t care, but we’re going and we’re going today.

Yeah. Good for you.

And she said, well, there’s one an hour away, but I don’t have privileges. And I said, I don’t care. , I don’t care.

Um, and she did honor that and she did call ahead so we didn’t have to wait in the ER and all of that stuff.

Um, so I am grateful to her for that. And we were there four hours before a cardiothoracic surgeon came in and said, I think I know what’s wrong with him. (Misdiagnosis number one.)

Um, but if I put him on my operating table today, he will die.

And I had been screaming for months that something was wrong with him. Screaming.

And I was just dismissed. Dismissed. I watched them put an IV in his head because his veins were so sick.

That they couldn’t keep an IV in him to just give him hydration. Let alone anything else. And so we had been there maybe six hours before they had put a central line in and been and fed his heart TPN directly because I was losing him.

I was losing him. He was dying, and, um, we came out of that hospital stay. Um, they went in and they did a fundo placation, which is when they basically tie a knot in the top of the stomach.

They flipped the stomach over itself. They installed a feeding tube, um, directly into his stomach. And, um, he had py um, some mild pyloric stenosis, which is a thickening of the bottom of the stomach so it doesn’t empty into the intestines like it should.

Um, which was causing his projectile vomiting. Um, however, they completely missed the immune deficiency and it wasn’t until he was 22 months of age.

Oh wow.

Um, and I almost lost him again before he was diagnosed with CVID.

What did they think? The doctor that said he couldn’t put him on the operating table, what did he think it was?

He thought it was, um, py pyloric stenosis.

And that, the fundo, um, valve, the valve at the top of the stomach was not closing properly. That’s why you think about when the babies were little, right? And when they started sitting up about six months of age, that that valve, that sphincter actually naturally tightens. So they stop spitting up as much. If you, if you remember that back.

He didn’t. Um, and then the pyloric stenosis, because the buildup of the pressure not emptying would actually cause the projectile vomiting. And that’s why at his worst, he literally vomited through his tear ducts, which is

So alarming. I can’t, that’s, that’s horror story. That is, you know, that’s like exorcist level crap,

Um, and you never wanna see that out of a tiny baby, let alone your own tiny baby. Um, . And so that’s what they thought was wrong with him.

But, uh, that wasn’t, I mean it maybe may the pyloric stenosis. Yes. Um, but no, truly what was wrong with him is he had no immune system and he was sick all the time.

And instead of running a fever, cuz he had no immune system to fight anything producing a fever, he was throwing up instead.

And so when he starts throwing up, even now at 17, I’m like, uh oh you’re going downhill. That’s my first clue.

Well, you know, you know, you know what the clues are

Now, now, yeah. It’s amazing how untreated illnesses that we take, kind of like for granted, right? Like daily I, childhood illnesses, whatever. They can do a lot of damage.

They can do a lot of damage. And, um, Bryce’s lungs are scarred to this day because of the amount of, um, pneumonia and bronchitis.That were, that was allowed to come in, set up, shop and hang out.

Because there were no fevers. There were no, there was nothing, uh, signaling that he was ill. Other than a, than throwing up. And at that young of age, they just go, oh, it’s just acid reflux. It’s just regurgitation. It’s just, oh, you need to slow his feeds down.

Because his stomach isn’t emptying it. No. He was sick. He was sick. And the second time I almost lost him is because we’d had him on multiple courses of antibiotics due to multiple infections. And he got C.. Diff so badly that his bowels stopped moving.

And he almost became septic. So this hospital stay was three weeks. I was six months pregnant with my youngest. I was so much under stress that my OB said, your child has stopped growing in utero.