In the Special Care Nursery
around 2 months
photo by Mattie's Studio
Our son ended up diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy, which, simply stated, is a condition that affects the signals from the brain to the muscles. Your muscles do A LOT of things, including chewing and swallowing and all the complex movement associated with those functions.
5 months
photo by Mattie's Studio
Breastfeeding didn't work so well for my son, but strangely enough, he was a pretty good eater. He ate a lot of variety of tastes and textures until he had a surgery to remove his adenoids.
1 year
photo by Mattie's Studio
After that, apparently it felt very different to swallow, and he eventually essentially stopped eating almost everything. This was extremely stressful as a mom, and we tried every trick in the book to get him to consume enough calories to grow. We had up days and down days, good days and pukey days (LOTs of pukey days). My son would eat well for a week and gain a lot of weight, only to lose it all with a week of puking.
around 18 months - one of the few pictures showing his true skinniness
He became cranky and tired all the time and lost a lot of the energy he needed to do all of his other therapies. Eventually we made the decision that he really needed to have a more consistent calorie input and made the call to have a G-Tube placed. It was a heart wrenching decision. Logically, it made perfect sense, but emotionally, there is this nurturing desire that as a mom, you should be able to feed your child, and in some ways, the placement of a g-tube feels like you are failing at nurturing. I know that that last part sounds a bit illogical (unless you've been in the same situation), but it is truly the way I felt.
2 years
One of the things that helped me change the way I felt was when I starting finding out information on blended diets. I found people through Google searches that were making their own blended food to feed themselves or their children through their g-tubes. This totally clicked for me. I feel very strongly that our bodies were meant to digest real food, and not just a laboratory concoction of vitamins, nutrients, oils, and corn syrup. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand the convenience of nutrition in a can, and I understand how for some parents of children with medical concerns, that is the best solution for everyone involved. But for us, I wanted my son to digest real food.
Shortly after finding and reading everything I could about blended diets, we scheduled the g-tube placement, and I ordered a Blendtec blender.
Ironically, our hospital really pushed formula on us, and a nutritionist at the hospital even told me that I wouldn't be able to get enough calories into my son through a blended diet. Call me stubborn, but I knew they were wrong.
2 1/2 years
Luckily, we work with our son through a private feeding therapy clinic that is very open and encouraging of me doing a blended diet for my son.
almost 3 years
We review our blend plans there with a certified nutritionist and have made some slight modifications based on her suggestions, like adding a calcium supplement to the blend.
3 years
amazing mom!
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