My Mommy got this bright idea that instead of feeding me Elecare hypoallergenic formula, she would feed me real food.  Huh?  How is real food going to go through my tiny feeding tube?  Mommy bought the granddaddy of blenders – The Vitamix.  She says food will get chopped up enough in the blender to go through my feeding tube.  I bet you are wondering what she is feeding me?  Here are the ingredients in my first trial run: water, rice milk, pears, sweet potatoes, olive oil, and baby food oatmeal.  It is pretty basic but she wants to make sure I do not have an allergic reaction to anything.  She has already mixed a little bit of each ingredient into my formula first to make sure I wasn’t allergic.  She will keep trying out new things so I can have a more varied diet.

And after my first week on the blenderized diet, I am happy to report that I have only puked twice!  Whoa!!  I usually puke several times a day (sometimes 5 times a day).  I can tolerate more volume of blended diet than I can of formula so now my mommy doesn’t have to feed me in the middle of the night anymore!  She used to have to “plug me in” and pump food into my belly for a few hours in the middle of the night.  My stomach is tiny and empties very slowly so I couldn’t handle a lot of food at once so I would be fed about 7 times a day on average with 2 feeds at night while I was sleeping.  Do you know what it feels like to have food dripped into your tummy all night?  I used to wake up a lot since I didn’t like being fed at night. Have you heard of reflux?  Try being fed when you are lying flat!

So far week 1 of this blended diet is going OK.  I will let you know how it continues to work!

Since birth, I have not been a good sleeper.  I just am not happy about being in a dark room all by myself.  And sleeping is very overrated.  Mommy and Daddy have tried EVERYTHING to get me to sleep.  They even made me do a sleep study at the hospital.  I refuse to sleep in their bed and I really don’t want to sleep in anyone’s arms either.  Music, melatonin, sleep medicine prescribed from the sleep doctor, a projector, fan, sleeping on an incline, rocking chair, feeding me, small blanket – nothing helps comfort me.  I just don’t want to sleep so I get cranky instead.

A typical night for me starts with me going to bed around 9 PM.  I like to stay up late like my Mommy.  I have to get bounced on a bouncy-ball in order to first fall asleep.  Even though I am bouncing, I cry the whole time.  Once I fall asleep, I am carefully laid in my crib so I do not wake up.  Now is when all the fun really starts – I wake up 10 to 20 times a night needing to be bounced back to sleep.  In the middle of the night, I need to get some food via my feeding pump plus I need some medicines throughout the night.  Sometimes, the feeding pump will come unconnected or I will puke causing a huge mess in my crib in the middle of the night.

It takes a team of Mommy, Daddy, night nurse, and night nanny to watch over me!  When Mommy and Daddy do not have night help, they sleep in shifts.  Usually Daddy monitors me until 3 or 4 in the morning and then trades off to Mommy.  They sleep on the couch so they do not wake each other up.

We are switching some things up to try to make me a better sleeper now that I am 13 months old.  Mommy plans to stop my night feeding and try the “Ferber Method”, that is letting me cry it out in the crib.  The first night, I cried for over 3 hours before I fell asleep.  Mommy came in to check on me every 10 minutes or so but I just wanted her to pick me up since I don’t want to sleep.  It has been a bumpy start so I will let you know how it goes.