My baby got botulism from ByHeart. What you can look out for.

Hello! I saw many posts from parents who were (rightfully) concerned about their babies who had been consuming ByHeart. I know a lot of the symptoms of botulism can kind of coincide with normal baby development, such as drooling or fussiness that can come from teething, so I thought I’d make a post to tell you guys what made me realize my son was sick. He is currently 4 months and was taking ByHeart from September 30 until the recall. After we stopped it, we didn’t notice many immediate changes in my son. I remember there were some days he seemed a little off but my family and I thought it might have to do with his vaccines. Honestly, we missed a lot of the initial signs because we just thought it was normal baby stuff and if we had gone to the hospital, they probably would’ve sent us back. He eventually became a lot more fussy, he was unable to get to sleep and stay asleep which was super unusual for him - he’s always been a good sleeper, and his bowel movements seemed to be getting irregular with diapers also being a lot less heavy. At some point he became less interested in eating and was also having a hard time drinking, sort of not being able to get a good suck/latch on the bottle - we thought this had to do with teething because he was also drooling quite a bit (didn’t think to much of it cause it’s normal at this age but looking back it was excessive). My son was also very fussy, which was unlike him. He’s had his days but this was very constant. He was napping a lot but still unusually tired. My son’s cries that are normally super loud ended up getting quieter and weaker as well. Ultimately, the thing that made us take him to the hospital was his head lag - we tried doing tummy time with him and he would immediately drop his head. He couldn’t lift it at all and that’s when we knew something was seriously wrong with him. Botulism tends to affect your upper extremities and works its way to the bottom - it’s important that any floppiness/weakness in babies is addressed immediately because the sooner you do, the better. I am sure many parents are scared and rightfully so - never be scared to advocate for your children, even if it seems like you might be “doing too much”. The sooner this stuff is caught in a baby, the less complications there will be. I wanted to share not to scare anyone but things you can look out for in your babies that have used ByHeart.