carenotes
Real blended food proves a lifesaver for tot who’s tube-fed My twins Andrew and Eleanor were 28-week preemies. Andrew came home from the hospital with three stomach surgeries under his belt and significant brain damage. The brain damage caused cerebral palsy and epilepsy, which put him at risk of aspirating and made feeding difficult. At 21 months he had a fourth surgery to place a G-tube to ensure he was getting nutrition safely and in hopes of boosting his calories. Andrew, I was told, could no longer eat real food. Instead, his diet would be a formula that was described as nutritionally complete, but which I discovered is made up of 53 per cent corn syrup. The G-tube solved the problem of getting formula into Andrew, but it exacerbated his reflux and vomiting. Andrew spit up every ounce, retched, lost weight, never slept and stopped smiling. Instead of producing stools, he had green diarrhea once or twice a week. He was on the brink of total dehydration and
doctors suggested more surgery: a J-tube, nissen-fundoplication or GJ-tube, but with the caveat that they might not work. Then, while scouring the Internet for stories about children with severe reflux, I came across something called the blenderized diet. In this diet, vegetables, fruits, grains and meats are blended in a super high-speed blender until they become liquid, then fed through the g-tube. Families out in the blogosphere said that real food had a calming effect on their children’s stomachs and as a result, stayed down. I had no idea that real food was a possibility with a G-tube! This diet – which was never presented to us as an option by our medical team – has given us our boy back. The blenderized diet isn’t new or radical. Feeding tubes have been around for
BLOOM ~ summer ~ 2012 ~ 15