When John was born he was 5 lbs 1 oz not bad for a baby born at 35 weeks but since he wasn't able to eat on his own he lost weight very fast. When he was discharged from the hospital 2 days later he weight 4 lbs 3 oz which was a big weight difference. After spending 4 weeks in the PICU at another hospital he went home weighing 5. 6 lbs. His weight gain was very slow almost none in the following months. When we arrived at Loma Linda University Childrens Hospital in January 2010 John was 5 months old and weighed 6.1 lbs. Two days after being admitted into the hospital they placed a feeding tube through his nose, finally he began gaining weight slowly. He was discharged 2 months later weighing 8.3lbs. Everything went great afterwards, he started gaining weight and his health problems subsided.
When John was 14 months his pediatrician decided that it was time to increase the calories he was taking and increased to 30 calories from 22. This is when our new troubles began. He did just fine for about 2 weeks and then the vomitting began. He wasn't tolerating milk no matter how much we fed him. I tried feeding him small amounts at a time over a long period and that made no difference. I took him back to his pediatrician and she switched his milk to Pediasure. He did great on it for the first week and then again the same thing happened. After him nearly choking during one of his feeding I took him to the Emergency room at Loma Linda. There they admitted him into the hospital to begin testing. They stopped his feedings and put in a PICC line to start feeding him through an IV. They gave us 2 options 1 was to change his G Tube to a J tube and the second was for a surgery to tie his stomach around his esophaugus to prevent anything from going back up. My husband and I decided to hold off on any surgery and good thing we did. They sent him home after 2 weeks in the hospital with a different type of milk, this one was partially digested to make it easier for him to digest. He did great on it, for the first week and then again the same thing happened.
I stopped feeding him milk to let his stomach calm down and started him on clear liquids which he tolerated just fine. After 2 days I started him back on Pediasure but I decided to do something different. I was dilluting his milk with rice water. For every 8 oz of milk I would add 2 oz of rice water, I never expected this to work but I was desperate to find a solution. This was the solution to his feeding problems. So the solution to the long battle with milk has finally came to an end, at least for now. He lost 12 lbs during this battle with finding an answer to his milk. Right now he is slowly gaining the weight back but is more active than ever.
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