What's Missing In This Picture???

What's missing in this picture? This picture was taken almost 2 weeks ago. Not sure? Look at the picture below for a hint.....

This picture was taken almost 2 months ago. Still not sure what the answer is? Read on.....

ANSWER: The item that is missing in the picture is.....(drum roll please).....HER FEEDING TUBE!!! AGH, so much has happened since the last time I blogged so I need to catch up. Summer is such a BAD time to update things.
So how did Alyson accomplish this? It all started with us going to a feeding conference on May 30th (I told you I was really behind). One of Alyson's speech therapists in the Up-To-3 program wanted Alyson to be a part of the conference where she would be used as a case study and assessed by Krissy Brackett who is a feeding specialist and is really good at problem solving just by asking questions. So she asked about reflux, medications, formula, ect. Her game plan was to change her formula to Carnation GoodStart, do continuous feedings at night and then don't feed her with the tube during the day.....at all! I had such a strong feeling what she was having us do was going to work! The goal was to have her get hungry enough in the day for her to start eating and the more she ate in the day, we would take that amount away at night during the continuous feeds until she was fully eating everything without the assistance of the pump at nights.

We had a cardiology appointment the following Monday (June 1st). She had been eating a little better and I mentioned this new method we would be started to see if it would help her eat but her cardiologist seemed very persistent to us making an appointment with the GI clinic for Alyson to be assessed for a G-tube. He still wanted us to still try to get her to eat but since it takes a long time to get into the clinic he wanted to make sure that if she needed to get a G-tube it could happen sooner than later and didn't want me to discount the idea of her getting one. She was about 15 pounds at this appointment and everything still looked great!

Alyson waiting in her room at PCMC for her cardiology check-up

We rented the feeding pump again and started out her feedings at slightly less than 2 ounces every hour (continuous) through the night for 10-12 hours. Once she woke up we took her off the pump and then we had to try to offer her the bottle every couple of hours and see if she would take it. I made her try to take it at least once a day for the first few days so she realized she felt better after eating because she literally almost had nothing to eat for a 12 hour time span for the first few days of this new method unless I made her. After a few days she started to come around and took 3 ounces at a time.....and then a few days after that actually started acting hungry.....and then started getting angry because we weren't getting her bottle made fast enough! Oh I LOVED it! She ended up getting the flu (no, not swine) and was sick for a couple of days towards the end of June and we had a hard time getting her back up to where she was. She was still eating 3 ounces at a time. Her stomach seemed to have a sensor on it that told her she had eaten 3 ounces because she literally stopped on the 3 ounce mark EVERY time. I was beginning to wonder what I was going to have to do for her to get more food during the day because we were still doing about 10-12 ounces of continuous feeds at night.

On July 3rd I was having a 'blah' day about her eating and telling my friend Amy that even if she did start eating I didn't know how I would give her the nasty medicine she has to take every day. Well, that night she took 5 ounces! I was thinking she was going to throw it up because she never took that much before. On July 4th, she took 30 ounces by mouth the whole day.....didn't use the pump or tube once that day. And the trend has continued on over 2 weeks later!!! We kept her tube in at first for the first few days to give her medications but once she pulled it out on July 7th, there was no going back for me. I knew I had to figure out how to give the medications to her without putting the tube back in. The first few times I had to give her medications, I put them in her bottle nipple and put some formula in with it so it wouldn't be as terrible. DANG she's smart because she caught on to that REAL fast! So I had to start having Frank hold her arms down and I had to force her to take them while she was screaming! Now (today), I pinch her cheeks to open her mouth and squirt in the medication and there is NO screaming involved.

Oh how nice it is to have this part of the feeding issue over and done with. I feel so blessed that we were able to be a part of that feeding conference. Now we are on to trying to get her to eat baby foods but I'm not too worried if she doesn't pick that up soon. She has gotten to be a little sugar junky though. She loves when I put ice cream on her tongue and today she even tried fry sauce and loved it. GOOD! All the fattening stuff she likes to help plump her up! As of right now I think she is still 15ish pounds.....maybe a few ounces more but she's still as cute as can be!