DorrieDorrie

Food3

This morning the person from the ‘feeding team’ came down to visit again finally. She hadn’t been since last May, when she unfortunately visited right in the middle of a period of intense retching, gagging and throwing up while Dorrie was recovering from a course of antibiotics.

Of course, this time Dorrie slept through her whole visit and we all just sat and talked. However, Miss D is in a better place in terms of eating and it’s probably time to get that ball rolling again however slowly.

As chronicled before, but perhaps not mentioned very lately, we started introducing real food into Dorrie’s tube feedings at the beginning of last July. We went very slowly introducing new foods, giving her about 3 weeks in between to let her body adjust to something other than formula for the first time in a long time. As we introduced new foods we continued to feed her the old ones, which meant that for quite a while she was getting the exact same real food every day — a big contributor to her orange tinged skin. But now, finally, we are getting to the point where she has enough foods that we can mix it up.

More importantly, she has started tolerating much larger volumes (8oz at once without throwing up!) and this means that the real food feeds (still using Neocate as a base) can be made to contain enough calories that we’ve been able to cut back on her overnight food. And finally, last week, we took the plunge. No more overnight feedings!!

We’re still working to introduce additional foods (we need some more fats in particular), but so far so good. This month has been pukier than December or January, but not alarmingly so — she seems to be tolerating the change pretty well. Whether or not we have the calorie mix right is another question, because we’ve had trouble getting accurate weights at home. She seems skinnier to me, but it also may be because she’s lengthening out.

Posted by mom, under little fat fairy, moving forward... or not, our little witch