I thought I'd start describing Cicily's health gear with her g-tube. Because Cicily has a very wide cleft palate and an underdeveloped lower jaw, she can't eat well by mouth. In addition, as you can see by the picture of me before she was born, she hasn't had a history of swallowing well (thus the 3 gallons of amniotic fluid she swam in). So when she was 2 weeks old she had a surgery done to place a g-tube so she could eat via a feeding tube into her stomach. She actually used to eat @10mLs of milk/day by mouth, but since she's had pneumonia twice and been sick on and off all winter we don't offer her any more food by mouth so she doesn't have a chance to aspirate it into her lungs. Instead we've been giving her an empty bottle so she associates having something in her mouth with her tummy getting full. She actually loves her bottle- it's the only thing she likes to have in her mouth and she'll hold it and shove it in! Hopefully in the next couple months we can work with her on starting solid food by mouth and we'll see how well she can swallow.
The Button:
The part on the left side of the pic is the "balloon" which is deflated to begin with, then inserted into the stoma (hole) in her stomach and filled with 5 mLs of water to hold it in place. The part on the left side is the "button" which always sits on her stomach and opens up for us to connect the "mickey adapter" when she needs to eat.
How the button looks on her tummy- I always describe it as the blow up thing on a beach ball :)
Button with mickey connected - eating in progress! One convenient thing is Cis can eat while she's sleeping.
Kangaroo pump- breast milk goes from the bag on top through the tube into Cis' tummy
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