Monday, March 9, 2015

Feeding Crisis and Blood Tests

Dear Ellie,

This past week, terms like "g-tube" and "ng-tube" were spoken.  Why?  Because you finally decided that you'd had enough of this whole "eating" thing.  For the past few months, you've consistently been on the razor's edge of refusing nourishment outright, and we've constantly stressed about what would happen if you one day just decided to turn your head when presented with the bottle.  This past week, we got to find out.

For a few days, feeding became simply impossible.  No matter what we did, no matter what kind of distraction we offered, nothing would get you to drink your milk.  Your mother and I basically went into a panic.  We called every doctor and therapist.  We scoured Babies R Us and Walmart and raked entire shelves of baby food, bottles, and sippy cups into the grocery cart.  We invented all manner of different ways to present you with fluids.  I even started making "breast milk-sicles" in the freezer.  The maddening thing was that you ACTED hungry.  In some cases, frantically.  But you just wouldn't eat.  Feeding you has always been a difficult, stressful endeavor.  This past week, it was amped up to a feverish pitch.

In the end, it seems as though introducing some formula into your breast milk may have been the problem.  We stopped offering formula and in a few days, you began to get your appetite back.  Still, we decided to test you for milk allergies, just to know whether we should avoid dairy in the future.  Unfortunately, that involved a blood test.  Unfortunately again, you have veins like your mother.  The same way that the NICU nurses had a hard time getting a PIC line into you while you were in the NICU, the technicians at the testing center couldn't seem to get your blood.  Three separate technicians kept sticking you for what seemed like upwards of 5 minutes.

I remember back in the NICU, when the doctors had to conduct some procedure or another that would cause you pain, it would break my heart to see your face turn red, your mouth open in despair, but hear nothing come out.  Back then, the ET tube was muffling your vocal cords, after all.  Back then, I remember just sitting there, wishing I could hear you cry.  This week, watching you get those blood tests made me realize that I'd gotten my wish.

8 comments:

  1. When and why did you start introducing formula? Just curious.

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    1. Just a few weeks ago. And we just got her allergies test back. Turns out she does have a "low grade" allergy to dairy and peanuts, as far as food goes. I suppose with her other feeding issues, an allergic reaction to dairy could have put her over the edge as far as feeding is concerned. She seems to be doing better at this point. It's just a rather stressful thing to deal with... Every bottle is a battle. I try not to be tense, but I can't help but to hold my breath while she's eating because if I do one little thing wrong, she loses interest in eating. Then there are those times when I fight all day to get her to where she needs to be, then she throws up an entire feed. Like that whole day of struggling was just a waste.

      I remember a few weeks ago I was euphoric that Ellie was eating about 2-3 spoonfuls of baby food per meal, then we invited over some playmates that were her age and watched them scarf down everything in sight and devour bottles full of milk in practically seconds. It was incredibly demoralizing...

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  3. Oh, Dana and Rani! This is heartbreaking for all of you. Poor little Ellie!
    When Daniel was little he cried and doubled up when given a bottle. Dairy, formula, goat's milk, etc, etc, none of them worked for him. By 3 months we had to put him on baby food with a calcium supplement. It's heartbreaking to see your baby hurting.
    ~Debby

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    1. Thanks Deb. We just remind ourselves that it could be worse. As long as we can just keep her eating and keep her from losing weight, I don't care how long it takes to feed her. She seems to be doing better now, and our stress level has dropped off quite a bit.

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  4. That must has been stressful as heck, and am glad you figured it out, and that things have gotten better. Are things better if Rani goes on various combinations of elimination diets? Absolutely no fun, those, I imagine.

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    1. Btw, I am a HUGE HUGE fan of baby-led weaning---no purees, baby self-feeds foods adults can eat. The downside with that is the shortterm payoffs are few (children may play with food and eat very little for a while), and the long term payoffs are potentially immense. It is amazing at churning out non-picky eaters in children with no health issues (mild to moderate reflux, I guess), and I do not know how it would work in babies with bad reflux for whatever reason, but it *may* be worth a shot.

      I was an inexplicably horrible eater (from the looks of it, I did have reflux), and I hated food mostly because people kept shoving a spoon in my mouth. I used to start dreading mealtimes. It took me a very, very long time to establish any sort of healthy relationship with food, and it only happened after people quit pressurizing me to eat, and I could pick what I liked (and turns out I am a south indian with an amazingly adventurous palate :)).

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    2. Yeah J, I agree with self-feeding. That's always been the way I've wanted to do things, but we've been in a rush to get some kind of alternative in her in the event that her milk consumption dropped off precipitously. She's not a big fan of someone else feeding her. She'll take a spoon or two, then get all Old Testament style angry and get her baby smite going. Like, shouting as though she were trying to tear down the walls of Jericho. If you try to spoon feed her, she'll smack it out of your hand and send baby food raining down on your perfectly clean shirt like catapult stones cast against the walls of a heathen city.

      But let her feed herself? She loves to do that. She'll eat puffs and watermelon and little chicken balls. I think babies are naturally equipped to eat when they are ready, even if it means they just as often use their food as projectiles than as a meal.

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