Feeds, part 5

Wednesday, December 31

I finally saw Dr. Sandoval this morning. He said they are going to start feeding Faith again, but this time they will do it through an NG tube that goes past her stomach into the beginning of her small intestine, and the feeds will be continuous, instead of just 3 mL every 3 hours. He said that she probably does have some reflux, but they think her upper GI tract is just not quite ready to handle feeds yet, so that's why they want to bypass that for now.

They got the tube placed... Faith didn't think that was too cool. Then the nutritionist came and said that she is going to recommend skipping the skim breastmilk at this point, since Faith is pretty far out from the chylothorax, and instead using regular breastmilk mixed with Pregestimil formula, since the stomach step of digestion is being skipped. I'm not too keen on the idea of formula, but this makes sense to me, since the milk she's given won't be going through her stomach to start being digested. The carbohydrates and protein in the Pregestimil are partially broken down, which is what the stomach would do during digestion. If she got just straight breastmilk, past the stomach and just into the intestine, it would cause digestive issues like loose stools or diarrhea. She won't need any formula once she can start having the food go through her stomach, she'll be on plain, normal breastmilk at that point, and hopefully will be getting it from a bottle (or straight from the source!). I would be happy to go home pumping and bottle-feeding though, if it will get us home sooner, because I know once we're home I can get help getting her off of bottles and exclusively breastfeeding. Honestly, at this point I will agree to just about anything they think might help get us home!