Another Diagnosis? Confirmed

It's true...the "Dumping Syndrome" was confirmed by the GI doctor today (see the last post for what this is). Things didn't improve with the change in medication, and in fact worsened, so we called the GI doctor to figure out next steps. After hearing about the worsening of symptoms, she was convinced and asked the nutritionist to work with us on modifying Mason's diet so that there is less "dumping."

So, you may be asking why did this get to be such an issue when things were going so well (relatively speaking, of course). It seems it is related to the change from milk to water based formula. The effects of dumping syndrome can be lessened with more fat in the stomach. Unfortunately, when we switched, we lost some of the fat content that breast milk has. So, the modification of diet will include adding some fat to the formula. Hopefully adding the fat will help to make the food less likely to empty out of the stomach too quickly and eating will be much less painful for our little chunky monkey (weighed in at 17 lb. 5.3 oz today).

Now, for the really good news....we get to start trying feeding Mason some rice cereal by mouth! It's only a tablespoon per day at first, but if all goes well we will gradually be able to increase the amount. We are so excited as it is the first step toward getting rid of yet another tube/button. Wish us luck!!

Also, we saw the lung doctor today and he was quite impressed with how Mason has been doing and how well we have kept him free of colds, etc. We had a really good visit and have some plans for trying to decrease some of the medications. He agreed that the surgery was the right thing to do and has helped turned a corner for Mason.

Now, if we could just get this feeding thing under control........