The nurses immediately got down to busy trying to get Ethan to eat. They took a completely different approach from the medical team at American Fork Hospital. In American Fork they were treating him as a preemie. If he wasn't awake for a feeding, they wanted to let him sleep and just feed him via the NG tube so that he could conserve his energy for the next feeding. At Primary Children's they made him work hard in order to allow him to be discharged faster.
A speech therapist came to observe one of his feedings and noticed that he was making some choking sounds when he was trying to eat. A Modified Barium Swallow Study was ordered and we discovered that about 1/3 of what Ethan was taking orally was not making it to his stomach - he was aspirating it into his lungs instead. No wonder the poor kid didn't like to eat! So I guess it's kinda dangerous or something to have fluid in your lungs (who knew?) and he was put on a diet of thickened breast milk which made it easier for him to swallow and get the milk down the right tube.
Our feeding plan was as follows: pump, thicken, bottle feed, finish with the NG tube. Two ounces every three hours. Two ounces doesn't sound like much, but each feeding took a little over an hour to complete. When you figure I was on strict orders to feed him eight times a day, over an hour for each feeding, it was a full time job just keeping the little guy fed. Not to mention the constant washing and sanitizing of bottles/pumping equipment, diaper changes countless doctor's appointments and all the regular things that come with caring for a newborn.
Big chair, little guy - Swallow Study
Dad carrying Ethan out
Home at last
