Day 18

Things are looking a bit brighter this morning. Yesterday we started adding a very small amount of Neocate into Noah's formula and he has tolerated it fairly well. Still having a few watery stools, but I am hopeful that it will settle. He is still fever free and starting to sit up and play for short periods. Seeing those beautiful smiles again makes my heart soar and I am so thankful that things seem to be progressing in the right direction.

The next step this week is to give the G-tube (stomach) feeding a try. The GJ tube holds Noah's pylorus open, causing lots of bile to back up into Noah's stomach which we continuously drain off. Without the central line for hydration, the concern is that we will continue to have electrolyte/dehydration issues with so much drainage coming from Noah's stomach. If we could eliminate this, that would be the ideal situation. So in the next couple of days, we will take out the GJ tube, put in a G tube and try some stomach feeds. I do not think that this will go well and I am concerned about retching and aspiration issues. But we haven't tried stomach feeds in a long time, so we need to give it a try to at least rule it out. If it doesn't go well, we may look at a surgical option, such as creating a separate stoma for a J-tube.