Wednesday, February 20, 2013

More Eating

Liam is making great progress with his eating! 3 weeks ago, Liam wasn't eating anything by mouth. He was only getting nutrition through his NG tube. Then Liam's NG tube came out unexpectedly. We thought we would be going to the clinic to get another one put in. (side note: oncology parents are very lucky that the nurses put NG tubes in. In other areas, parents are required to put in the tubes. Kudos to those parents)

Liam hates getting the tube in, it's a pretty horrible experience. We told Liam if he started eating that he wouldn't have to get a new tube. To our surprise, this was enough to start getting him to start taking some bites of food. Over the first week, Liam was nibbling a bit of food at each meal. Initially Liam would only eat cereal, hot dogs and alphaghetti. Not enough to maintain his weight, but it was a big step forward. We didn't try leaving his tube out during treatment as it was so critical for him to get nutrition.

After the first week, something changed. It was almost like Liam gained confidence that he wasn't going to vomit when he ate. Liam has been vomiting on and off for a year now. A year ago, it started due to the hydrocephalus caused by the tumour. Then Liam vomited on and off for 6 months due to chemo.

We keep weighing Liam, so far he hasn't lost any weight. We are doing a lot of little things to boost his calories in the food he does eat. In the last couple of days, Liam has even tried new foods (cheese and hamburger). This is a huge step forward that he is trying new things.

Liam does drink a lot of milk. He's getting more calories from milk than he should, but we'll take all the calories we can. I tried to mix some formula in with his milk. He noticed a change and almost stopped drinking milk altogether. Unfortunately, there is no hiding anything in his food. Liam knows when there is change and he won't eat the food when there is a change to it.

Getting Liam to eat is a full day effort, but we're doing all we can to get him enough calories.

1 comments:

qualitycurls said...

Hooray!!!! will he take a little cream in his milk? For a while we added powdered milk and cream, but it made it so thick Kieran stopped drinking it... we still do add cream

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