Ok, River, no more health scares. Please.

Yesterday, I found blood in River's dirty diaper. Not a whole lot. Just traces really. But it was unmistakeably bright red blood.

I will spare you the agony of suspense I went through before getting to the doctor's office. Here's the conclusion:

He's fine. Breathes sigh of relief.

...

Earlier that morning, he had some gas pain (not unusual for him), but it was bad enough for him to get really upset about. After his nap, he woke up, nursed, and then I changed the scary diaper.

I immediately called the pediatrician's office, left a message with the promise that the nurse would call me right back, and then called my mom.

She helped me not freak out too much, prayed with me, and then the nurse called me back to schedule an appointment for later in the afternoon.

I did my best to have anormal afternoon. To preoccupy my mind. Liam is good at helping me with that.

Since I didn't have the car for the day, my mom left work early to take us to the doctor's office across town, and Trish was amazing enough to come and stay with Liam, despite the fact that she was already having a difficult day.

I brought the diaper with me, which the doctor took a sample from to rule out any kind of bacterial infection, but she was pretty sure that River is intolerant to dairy, and the dairy I consume is irritating River's intestines through my breast milk.

So, the long story short is that I am supposed to avoid dairy for a little while to see if that makes the problem go away. I'm pretty sure it will, especially since I have had a niggling suspicion that dairy is what has been causing him the everpresent gas problems, but I didn't want to find out for fear that I would have to make some changes in my own diet. I eat a lot of dairy. Especially cheese and yogurt. Now I am feeling really bad. It took blood in his diaper for me to give it a try.

Oh, River, I am sorry.

He continues to thrive despite it all. And he's gained a pound and a half in the last month.

He's such a happy little guy.