Feeding Cal with Dr. Brown's

As I mentioned in this post a few months ago, Cal is still heavily relying on being fed through his g-tube. HOWEVER, he does eat a little bit of "solid" food. We feed him mostly pureed baby foods, and also try giving him bites of softer foods that we eat. I feel like when my husband and I eat in front of him, he loses interest with whatever baby food mush we're trying to give him and wants what we're eating. Which I'm totally okay with! Yesterday I was eating one of those chicken wraps that I made (blog post on those here), and he was acting like he wanted a bite. So I gave him a black bean after mushing it a little in my fingers. The chipotle dressing on the wrap is a little spicy so I thought he might hate it. But he kept acting like he wanted more and probably ate 5 or 6 beans! Haha. Seems like nothing, but I was so happy. #itsthelittlethings

When I do feed him baby food, I have Dr. Brown's Baby products to thank again for making Cal's meal time go as easy and smooth as possible. I'm sure I've mentioned many times that I'm a bit of a clean freak. I love the non stick base on their bowls to keep them in place, but my favorite solid feeding product they carry is their spatula spoons. I use those suckers to wipe Cal's mouth clean after every bite and they work like a charm. I wish I had the will power to just let Cal go crazy with his food and make a mess. But I don't.

I can't believe my baby is almost one! I really thought Cal's g-tube would be much more temporary. I thought we'd have it out by the time he turned 6 months for sure! My hope is that as he gets older and we are able to reason with him a little more to a point where he can really understand, that he'll realize he doesn't need it and will start to eat more on his own.

On a bit of a side note, we had our first scary gtube experience two nights ago and I want to document it real quick. We went to the Murray hospital to see my grandpa, who just had emergency heart surgery, and as I was getting Cal out of the car, I accidentally yanked his gtube completed out of his stomach! He was in the middle of being fed. So I had his little backpack with the pump in one hand, but as I was pulling him out I felt something get stuck. I thought it was his shoe since that’s happened before so I just tugged and continued pulling him out, not knowing the tubing was caught around the bottom of the car seat. I wasn’t even pulling that hard, but he started screaming and Daniel saw the gtube was completely out. Since he was in the middle of eating his milk and stomach contents spilled out all over him. He calmed down pretty quickly and went back to his happy self. Since we were at the hospital we rushed him over to the ER with my emergency gtube kit I had in he car (that I had never had to use and I was panicking a little). The hole in his stomach can close in as little as an hour if it’s not held open! Anyways, to shorten the story, we put in a Foley catheter at Murray to hold it open, but ended up being transferred to primary children’s to get a new tube put in since Murray didn’t have his size. He was such a brave boy, I know it hurt him and I felt like the worst mom on the planet. It was one of those thing where you’re like, did that really just happen?! Can I PLEASE go back 30 seconds and redo that?!

ANYWAYS, luckily Cal is quick to forgive and forget. Love that boy so much!