The last three days have gone very well in the Long household. Jason is coming along in leaps and bounds and really doing well with his oral intake. Bruce and myself are really pleased with the progress we are making.
As you can see his weight has increased nicely to 14.6kgs which is fantastic. On Friday night we started reducing his night time pump feeds by 50mls per night and tonight we are down to 550mls. I decided to rather go a bit slower and reduce by 50mls instead of 100mls just to see how he goes with that. But the weight is still going great.
Onions are still the best tasting thing Jason has ever eaten (not that he has eaten much at all). Imagine if he tried other things!! Anyway onions are a HUGE hit. He will sit in the kitchen with me for over an hour with a spoon and happily munch on onions. Before he was just putting them in, chewing and spitting out but now every onion that goes in goes down. Also raw whole carrot is still a hit. We are even finding onion and carrot in his poos (first ever food we have seen). Sorry about the too much information but for us it's exciting!
He will still happily sit with us at the breakfast and supper table and try things but I think the paediasure does full him and keep him satisfied for the day. Look at this stage we are in no hurry to reduce the milk - he is doing so well and gaining nicely so why ruin something that is going well. I do get a lot of people with good intentions commenting to try give him "this" or "that" to eat but it's not a case of taste preference. Also people ask why have we gone the syringe route. Well the answer for that is Jason will not accept milk in a bottle or a cup so a syringe is the way we go for now. We have to treat Jason like a baby, not a 4 year old. He has never eaten solid food. When he stopped eating at the age of 6 months old he was on stage one purees. So we have had to go back to milk and slowly "wean" him again from milk to soft purees and will progress as we go along. Yes a syringe isn't ideal but I am happy with syringing for now. The milk is going in his mouth and down his throat and not directly into a feeding tube. He is learning the skills of swallowing and tasting so we are taking it slowly.
Jason's speech is coming along great. He doesn't stop taking (still a lot in Jason language that we don't understand) but there are definite words that we are getting. His speech therapist is very happy with his progress. He understands so much and the talking is coming along nicely.
Anyhow I better get going. It's time to make some potato salad and Jason keeps shouting "onion" "onion" so I guess he is ready to eat onion. Getting a bit impatient he is!