Is that light a train?

Is that light a train???

Do you remember that old joke where the "light at the end of the tunnel" turns out to be a train?  The medication that we thought would turn out to be a "light" for Christopher and solve all his feeding problems turned out to be just a "train" after all.  Unfortunately, after days and days of administering it to him it didn't work.  He was still puking just as much as ever, but this time I wasn't the only one wearing a beach towel burp rag.  The nurses and doctors didn't dare approach him without preparing to "duck and cover". 

It was decided to continue the medication with the hopes that it would eventually work, however Christopher had clearly decided that HIS prescription for all this was to just STOP eating.  I can't say I blamed him.  If food equaled projectile vomiting, then it made total sense to refuse to eat.  He made his opinion abundantly clear to anyone who tried to feed him.  If a bottle came near him, he cried and cried.  He also did the back bend trick in order to get as far away from that bottle as possible.  He became so adept at it that I think his head actually met with his toes. If you've ever tried it, then you know it's nearly impossible.   His distaste and fear of food became so bad that he would react this way if anything came near his mouth even his blanket! 

In came the feeding specialist to the rescue.  He could see that Christopher had developed a STRONG aversion to the bottle or anything else that came near his face, so he decided to try a couple of different strategies to help make feeding more attractive for Christopher. 

First he brought in a tray of flavorings.  Apparently, they thought that it wasn't the throwing up that bothered Christopher.  It was the awful taste of the formula.  I would agree that the stuff does smell and taste terrible, but I don't know.  Unless it will also keep him from throwing up, I just don't see this working, but okay I'll play along.  We experimented with vanilla, strawberry, etc.  Surprise, surprise!  He didn't want anything to do with any of it!  Well, at least we tried.

Next we tried every formula on the market.  The thought was that maybe it wasn't the little muscle between his stomach and esophagus that was not working correctly, but that maybe he just wasn't tolerating the formula.  One of the first ones they tried was soy based, but it didn't work.  Then we tried a bunch of "pre-digested" formulas.  Yeah, I know that sounds absolutely disgusting, but rest assured these are not formulas that have been pre-digested by people.  The elements are broken down, "pre-digested," in the process of making the formula.  Anyway, none of these worked either.

We also tried positioning.  We experimented with holding him at different angles and having different people try to feed him.  The thought that he wasn't eating because of ME really hurt, but as it turned out he didn't eat for anybody else either.  We even tried reclining him in a bouncy chair and feeding him without him being held by anyone.  Nope!  That was a failure as well.

We basically tried everything in the feeding specialist's "bag of tricks" with no luck.  His conclusion was that Christopher really did have a severe reflux problem.  The medicine wasn't working today, but let's give it more time in the hopes that it will start to have an effect.

At this point, I really didn't see that we had any other choice.  Give it more time, just a few more days.  The days turned into weeks, but the medication still turned out to be a just "train" and not the "light".


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More tomorrow...