This week has been a bit of a rough week. In part because we've been
very busy. I don't do well with being overly busy, it aggravates me.
On top of our regular schedule, we've had several doctors/therapist
appointments, school projects, Enoch's birthday to celebrate,
Parent-Teacher Conferences, a baby shower, a family Halloween party and
family
pictures... as well as a boy keeping us at night with a high fever,
another boy with Pink Eye, and a broken toilet due to someone's beloved
toy cars being flushed down it. With all of these things keeping us
running around, I feel like I'm falling further and further behind on my
list of things to do, which further exasperates me, but ultimately, the
building stress of Jordan not eating well is what is really getting to
me. This is his fourth week on his appetite stimulant and I was hoping
that by now we would be seeing some improvement. We're not. Our GI
told us that his current intake qualifies as malnourishment and that we
need to be getting more volume into Jordan... instead of 3-
5oz bottles a day, like he was regularly getting in China, he wants us
to get him to take 5- 8oz bottles. Much easier said than done. As
we've attempted to increase the volume of food we get into Jordan, it's
becoming more and more obvious that his stomach is not emptying like it
should and he has started vomiting like Mason used to. *Huge sigh* Few
things can be more maddening than putting your heart and soul into
getting a
kid to eat, only to have him puke it all back up. We know from past
experience that an appetite stimulant won't work if the last meal is
just sitting in the stomach, and putting more into an already full
stomach just backfires. Thankfully I was able to get in touch with
the GI who was willing to listen to me and prescribed the Delayed
Gastric Emptying medication without making us go in for another visit,
but our insurance requires us to use a mail order
pharmacy, so actually getting the medication is a process and we've had
several hang-ups in getting it sent out... another frustration for the
week. But I think we finally have it all worked out so, hopefully,
we'll
have the medication next week and get the little guy's digestive track
working a little bit better.
All of this has made me think back to when Mason's GI issues were at their worst. I've gone back and re-read some
of the blog posts I wrote at the time and recalling how hard it was
brought tears to my eyes. I guess I was just feeling a great deal of
empathy for my old self. We went through some rough times without the
luxury of the knowledge and experience we have now. Before we figured out what was going on with Mason, I wrote that he was
"a constant source of joy and worry". The same can be said of Jordan
now. I worry a lot about getting him the nutrition he needs to grow but
he is such an incredible joy too and the more he relaxes, the more of
his fun personality we get to see. I love his scrunched up "cheese"
face and the way he nods, smiles and raises his eyebrows like we're
sharing an inside secret whenever we reach an understating, and I adore
his little obsession with cars and how he says c-aaah-r all day long in
his funny little voice. The kid makes us smile. We're going through a stressful period with his
eating, but we know that things can get better. I'm just feeling a bit
impatient. But look at this kid... he is so worth it!!
P.S. I'm going to start phasing my knitting blog back into a knitting blog and just use our private family blog for family posts. If we actually know you "in real life", and you'd like an invite, just leave a comment with your email address and I'll add you to that blog :)
