calm before the storm

Things change tomorrow. 

That's when we're going to stop feeding Zachary.  Not to punish him, but to get him to experience hunger and hopefully start eating baby food and other solids that he should be eating at his age.  Right now, he just drinks formula from a bottle, and not even enough to grow sufficiently at that.  So we have to give him the extra he passes on through his feeding tube, supplemented with other oils and calories. 

This "tube weaning" as it's called is sure to be hell on everyone, especially him.  The general plan is to start reducing the amount of formula he's given each day until after about a week, when he'll be denied the stuff entirely in hopes that he will eat solids because he is so hungry.  So my guess is we're going to have a hungry, cranky, irritable, and sleep-deprived toddler on our hands after a couple days. (I get cranky when I miss a single meal so I can't imagine how it must feel to miss multiple ones).

Sounds simple enough, in theory.  The big obstacle, at least in my mind, is that he generally chokes and barfs whenever any real food makes its way into his mouth.  He usually panics and gags whenever this happens.  He hasn't even had any solid food in his mouth for almost two month.  So to say he's out of practice eating would be an understatement.

Not going to be easy for us either, watching our baby cry out in hunger and wonder why we are not helping him.  We've been told by the therapists that parents are often too eager to pull the plug on the wean just before there's about to be a breakthrough.  I can totally see that happening.  There will undoubtedly be some tension between us and his therapists in this regard, so it will be a stressful time for everyone.  But it will be worth it if it works. 

Zachary needs to start gaining some weight.  He's bounced between 16.5 and 17 pounds for the better part of two months.  It could be worse, but it worries me that my almost 19-month old weighs so little, especially if he gets sick.  We've been warned to expect that he'll lose weight during the wean, so we'll be seeing his pediatrician every couple days for weigh-ins and general health checks.  We'll abort the wean if he loses more than 10 percent of his body weight.

So on this calm Sunday morning we're anticipating the coming storm; hoping it won't be as bad as we think and praying we'll all get through it in one piece.