Karsie has been experiencing quite a variety of food lately. She has pretty well learned the mechanics of eating/chewing even. In fact, one of the things that we have decided is that she likes the solid foods much better than the puree foods.
A while ago we asked a question on the blog about feeding Karsie and we said we would talk about our decision or something we were working on after all the suggestions you gave. Turns out, we didn't really decide anything. We did a trial run on not feeding her until she took something like a bottle (with a do or die time at 2:00 p.m.). In other words, we skipped her 10:00 a.m. feeding so she would get hungry enough to eat, which she does do when forced. Whatever she didn't take during that time we would absorb during her other feedings throughout the day. The first day was pretty good. She took the bottle and drank about 70% of what she would have to eat. However, the other days did not go so well. She didn't take the bottle at all and we had to cut our losses and feed her at 2:00 anyway so she got her fluids, which proved to be hard because we were giving her the whole day's worth of food in half the time, which made her uncomfortable. So, we shelved that idea.
Michelle has been drinking the special tea (this is being written by Kevin, so I don't know what it's called), eating oatmeal, hydrating herself, etc. in order to increase her milk supply. We're not really sure how it's going because Karsie does like to nurse and she usually empties Michelle, so we hope that it's working.
As far as where we go from here, it really looks like we're just going to have to wait until Karsie is on all solids with breast milk supplements and cut the G-Tube when she eats enough. Good news is that she LOVES solid food. She's been eating puffs like a pig for a while. She absolutely loves avocado and she can handle mangos. She is off and on with yogurt, but she can't get enough cheese (neither can her dad). She also has been introduced to other types of crackers that are kind of like the puffs, but they are bigger so she has to hold them and chew on them. She does very well with that and enjoys it. We're just going to have to wean her off the tube with G.I.'s help. There are other things we have yet to try, and we're still trying the sipee cup, but her interest is there and we may just have to be a little patient.
