A Typical Day of Feeding

Tennyson doesn't like to eat. That probably sounds really strange to you. It's one of those things I never ever ever thought I'd have to worry about. I never heard of a baby that hated to eat - picky eaters yes - but babies who would rather starve than eat, never. From the time she was born, she struggled with sucking. She was 3 or 4 days old when she finally developed the skill to suck. Doctors were immediately concerned when she didn't have this natural skill that all healthy babies have. Soon enough she learned to drink from a bottle and eventually even suck on a pacifier.

So what does a 2 year old eat if they don't eat food? Believe it or not, Tennyson is not the only child in the world who doesn't like food (even though that is what I felt like for the first 2 years of her life). There is a fairly wide variety of formulas that offer complete nutrition for babies and kids like Tennyson.

Tennyson "eats" a formula called Elecare. Elecare works for Tennyson. It's completely broken down so all her body has to do is absorb the nutrients. On top of everything else Tennyson has slow motility. Motility concerns how fast food is digested. So the less her body has to work to break food down, the faster it digests, she is less likely to throw it up, and we can get the calories into her that we need to.

So this is what our daily set-up looks like:

I will explain all of Tenn's meds in a later post

If I'm really organized I'll prepare all of this the night before, so I can just wake up and have the entire day's worth of milk, water, and meds in nice little grab-and-go bags like this:

Each bag contains milk, water, her medicine for that time of day, and 2 large syringes of water for before and after her feed:

When it's time for Tennyson to eat, we use a feeding pump that looks like this:

It sits on an I.V. pole and the feeding bag cord runs through the top of the pump:

And this little cutie pie is sitting here "eating" her breakfast (she has a bib on because I offered her a bottle - which she declined):

pardon the messy morning hair

She is fed like this 3 times a day. She is also fed all night long while she sleeps to make sure she gets all of her calories she needs. It is really time consuming to prepare her feeds. I wash everything every night and from start to finish it takes me about 45 minutes to get everything ready for the following day. She takes an hour to eat with her feeding pump, and then she has to sit there for about an hour afterward or else it all comes up. Positioning is really important with Tennyson since she still has pretty severe reflux.

I am hopeful that one day Tennyson will not need to use her feeding tube. But until then, it's what keeps her alive, so I am very thankful for it.

e-mail me at tennsense@gmail.com

Amy