July 9 PM

My last kiss of his free face before they put his tube back in. Excuse my weary eye, it has been a long 48 hours.

Ignore the trach, my nurse is holding up g-tube. You can see how cumbersome it is. And no, you can't take the two off when you're not feeding, it is all one piece.

Everett drank Enfamil A.R. which is for reflux, so it is thickened with rice, without a problem in 20 minutes. He drink the entire 80 mL. 

During rounds we decided to do the swallow study, since we don't want him aspirating and coming back with pneumonia.

The swallow study will give us these options:

1. Best case scenario, he does not aspirate with breast milk, formula, or thickened formula. I would then try to get him to drink formula since he drinks it best to get him out of here in the shortest amount of time, without a G-tube, and work on breastmilk when we get home. 

2. He aspirates with breast milk but not formula. This scenario would allow us to feed him formula and get him out of the hospital, hopefully without a G-tube, and we can work on eating breastmilk with the speech pathologist. We could do a follow up swallow study into or three months and hopefully he can each breast milk then.

3. Worst case scenario, he aspirated with all three, and he needs a G-tube for all feedings. We would only be allowed to work on feeding from a bottle with the speech pathologist, and would do a follow-up swallow study in three months. 

If he does not aspirate then we just need him to take all of his meals on his own, with formula since it will be faster exit out of here, and we can avoid the G-tube altogether. 

I am constantly at odds with a G-tube or not. If he is quite successful was formula, we will need to give him more time in here to see if we can avoid the procedure. However, I finally settled with the thought of a G-tube and being able to go home. I'm not sure I can handle more weeks here, trying to get him to eat. Clearly I will do whatever is best for him. Kristin is leaving on Sunday though and if we have a few more weeks in the hospital I will have to call many for help. It will also be long days and nights, since I will be trying to feed him every meal. 

We gave him his 11 o'clock meal of breast milk through his tube, I hope it's not his last one for a while. I really hope we can somehow continue with breast milk, even if it's a combination of the two. We are going to need to buy a freezer to store all of his breast milk if he is not able to eat it. Our freezer is already full! You might be getting breast milk on his cereal when his five. ;)