Weaning and Waiting

We are really trying to give Thomas the opportunity and the incentive to eat by mouth. He will be in preschool in the Fall and I will be going back to work so I feel like now is the time to make a big push.

As usual, we have good food days and bad food days. Weaning from a g-tube is not easy and there are many different methods. You can go to feeding clinics and hospital programs to help you wean your child from a g-tube. Tom has had weekly oral therapy for months at the Children's Institute of Pittsburgh and at home through Early Intervention since he was about eight months old. We are weaning at home with support from two nutritionists who see Thomas about three times a month to monitor his weight and eating.

Tom loves the Nuk brush.

The consensus from the professionals is that he has the oral motor skills to eat and it is safe for him to eat from a medical standpoint. The missing piece of the puzzle is motivation. He doesn't have the motivation to eat a full meal. While he loves a taste of almost anything, you just can't get him to eat a sustaining amount of it on a regular basis.

Food is so enjoyable that it's hard to understand that nothing will entice him to eat a good amount of food. It's frustrating because it goes against the norm for most everyone.

Since good tasting food has only gotten us so far, I feel that the only answer is to let him get hungry. Really hungry. I have been reading tons of information from other families that have weaned their children from tubefeedings and the child really needs to be hungry to motivate them to eat. It's like they don't understand that going through the work to eat a measurable amount of food will stop the hungry feeling. And you can only explain and bargain so much with a two and a half year old!

So now we are doing a large bolus of food in the morning and before bedtime to give him a cushion of calories and hydration. Then during the day we are allowing him to feel hungry and taking every opportunity to feed him. He is in the highchair about 4-5 times a day now with extra snacks in between. He is also doing some playing with food without the expectation of eating. I don't want food to be come a struggle so we need to keep it fun. He drinks about five or six ounces of water a day through his sippy cups which helps. Since the weather is getting hotter we are doing two small boluses during the afternoon/evening depending on how much he had to eat and drink.

I'll let you know how this week goes. Hopefully we can see some progress in the amount of food he eats soon.