Follow-up GI appointment

Sep 05 2009 1 Comment

Yesterday Will had his GI follow-up appointment with Dr. Burpee at Seattle Children’s. The test results for the pH probe, Upper GI and Endoscopy were all normal. He had 31 episodes of reflux detected by the pH probe during the 24 hour period. One of them lasted a minute, but none longer than that. His Upper GI should normal anatomy, with no twists or other issues. The biopsies from the Endoscopy were all normal, except one in his stomach which showed minor irritation. Dr. Burpee said that about 40% of the time they get one of those results and it was nothing to worry about.

 Since we started thickening Will’s formula he has been eating better. He is still not back up where he was, but now he is eating around 24 oz per day. He is much happier during the feedings and eats smoother usually. (Fingers crossed I am not jinxing anything by actually writing this down). We are trying a few solids too, but so far he is slow to take to it.

Dr. Burpee wanted us to decrease his medicines, but we aren’t ready for that yet. Things are leveling out for us after our eventful summer and it is nice to have things working again. We agreed that when we were comfortable that we would first stop the Zantac and then later decrease the Prevacid. We are going to go see him again in 3 months. He is a very nice doctor and reasonable about us not wanting to monkey with anything right now.

So fingers crossed we keep his feedings going fine and can working on introducing some solids in the next month or so. I can’t wait to see blueberries all over those cheeks.

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Now Will too

Aug 03 2009 Leave a Comment

I should probably start at the beginning of the story to just give you some background. Jackson (who is now 4 ½ years old) started showing signs of feeding issues within 10 days of birth. We began by putting him on “hypoallergenic” formulas, while we ran some tests. During that time we also discovered during an upper GI procedure that he had “severe reflux.” This started months of switching formulas, increasing and changing medicines, many trips to Children’s Hospital for tests only to end up putting in a NG feeding tube when he was 4 ½ months old. We replaced the NG tube with a G-tube (surgically placed into is tummy) when he was 11 ½ months old.

The good part of his story is that he is now eating normally and probably better than a lot of kids his age and has been for 2 years. He participated in a 2 week intensive feeding program through Children’s Hospital when he is 2 ½ years old and was very successful. I will write more about his story later, but that is Jack in a nutshell.

Now on to Will… William was born March 18, 2009. Within 4 days he should the same signs of a milk protein intolerance as Jack, so we put him on the only formula that ended up working for Jack, Neocate (a prescription only formula that is very expensive, but works.) That helped the crying at night and got rid of the mucous in his poops. Two weeks later he started to cry during the feedings, showing reflux symptoms, so we put him on Prevacid. A week later we added Zantac at night to help him settle down. After an increase in his dose he has been humming along, gaining weight great until recently. He never has been easy to feed, but now he is crying during his feedings again and we are fearful that this is going to put us on another feeding aversion path.

It is such a helpless feeling to look at your baby crying while you are trying to feed them and not know how to help. It brings back all of the feelings I had with the months of fighting with Jack to get him to eat. Will may have not been easy to feed, but he would eat. I am just so fearful that he will decide that it hurts to much and stop eating just like his brother. All I want to do is help him.

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