Appointments: Day 3 - G.I.

All done! This was a good week. We went in with a list of questions, mostly just basic questions about the G-Tube and feeding, like rashes we're seeing and size of the button questions. But we also had questions about working to move her off the G-Tube. Here's a list of answers to questions we asked.

- We're moving her to complete breast milk!!! Yay! She will be supplemented with a small amount of calories but we're moving off of the formula. Our insurance will be happy about this. The wean will take us about a month.

- We're weaning her off of Reglan. Also a Yay!!! This will take about two to three weeks and she will hopefully be off forever. Assuming no problems arise.

- All of this is because her growth (minus head size) was awesome this month. She jumped quite a bit this time, especially her length. We think her body focuses on certain growth in intervals and this month was length. We put in a formal request that the next interval is head circumference.

- She's now allowed to be on her belly for crawling, within reason of course. We've been getting her out of crawl position when she slides down because the docs were a little nervous at first, but it's less fragile and scary now, so she can crawl using it (not that she's that far away from crawling now anyway).

- At one year, our next appointment, Karsie will be moved to regular milk and we will start to wean off of the G-Tube. This all assumes she makes growth the next couple of months and she starts to drink from a sippy cup. We haven't mentioned this yet, but we've given up on the bottle and are focused on the sippy cup. Karsie is starting to get the hang of it, so we hope by the time of our next appointment she will be drinking enough to stay hydrated so we can get off the tube if she is able to eat.

- Butter is our friend. The dietician said that all the foods she is eating are wonderful as they are high in proteins and fats. However, since the fats are important for brain growth we can feel free to put butter in anything we choose since she isn't showing any allergies to dairy. Don't you wish your dietician said the same thing?