Amazing Feeding Progress

Ashley is eating!!!! I can't believe it my little girl got her g-tube inserted early April 2007 and has been getting all her diet from nutren formula every since. Ashley would occasional have a bite or two of food but she was basically full all the time she was getting 3 cans a day for the first year on the tube and had a lot of trouble keeping that down and then 4 cans of formula a day for the last year. She was just full all the time as she was being feed around the clock. I thought getting her off the tube would involve some very serious intervention. It was just something i couldn't image happening anytime soon. My little girl just has a way of surprising me and I'm so thrilled.

She had stomach flu just recently and had nothing but Pedialyte for 5 days she lost weight and her stomach could only handle her formula pumped in at a very slow rate while her GI tract recovered. This left her hungry so I started to feed her easy foods like banana, rice apples, cream of wheat. She was hungry and has been eating 4 meals a day!! Yippee. So far so good I haven't been giving her any nutren just water or apple juice for hydration in her tube she doing great so far. I think she is much more ready to handle the different texture of food now then she was ever before. She really enjoys cream of wheat, red river cereal, bananas, avocado, brown beans, egg yolk, rice, broccoli and even canned pasta. She open to try anything whatever we are eating at dinner she seems to enjoy. Everything she eats is topped with butter, mayo, cheese, cream or oil to punch up the calories. It's a yummy diet.

She even feeds her self cheetos those are 10 cals each she eats about 8 or so at one time. I'm so proud of her progress it's just been 10 days but things are going well. I'm also giving her 3 oz water 4 times a day in between meals via her tube and 3 or 4 oz apple juice via the tube at night. So far so good i hope she can keep this up and we don't go back to using the tube for anything but meds, vitamins and water. It's very early yet just 8 days of eating but I'm feeling really positive about things.

If anyone else is working on this I found these two books helpful: Poor Eaters - Helping children who refuse to eat by Joel Machet
Just Take a Bite by Lori Ernsperger

Here's pictures of her eating away....

A little snack of cheetos before bed

Notice the empty plate! She been eating everything on her plate.


Just two weeks ago i asked her OT how to stop her from playing with her plate at dinner she was always dumping it and that stopped as soon as she was more interested in the food she hasn't done it since.