Leaking Green

We are about a week into a natural food diet with Lucas. Nothing radical, just spinach and coconut water so far. We are using it to supplement some of his regular water that he needs and will move on from there.

One of my biggest hesitations so far is the amount of volume that will increase with choosing to go this route. Lucas has issues with retching. It comes on in spontaneous bouts and there isn't much we can do to control it. He tends not to tolerate thicker formulas so we thin his food down making a larger volume, thus a longer feed time. Over the past several months we have been lucky to find a formula that works that allows him to only get 4 feeds throughout the day plus some overnight, depending on if he is well. The natural food diet will be a lot more volume, thus he will be sporting his backpack much more often.

So back to the title of this blog post. Yesterday around dinner I gave him his regular dose of spinach and coconut water. The feed seemed to go fine. We have had some issues with pieces of spinach being lodged in the pump but it all seemed normal.

10pm rolls around and we are ready to hook him up again. His attachment goes in, looks secure and we start the feed. I go back in to check him around 10:30 and there is green liquid all over his bed. What the heck?!

After the feed is stopped, bag is cleaned and examined as well as the pump, we are both baffled. Thankful that Lucas is a deep sleeper and we managed to change him and switch beds without waking him up we are cleaning gross formula off everything.

It appeared that his tube was leaking from the inside. I wasn't prepared or in the mood to take him in to fix it. So we bandaged him up and I sat down with my good friend google.

After a period of time searching I read another moms blog and she had a similar story. It turns out that a piece of food can make it all the way through the pump and into the actual gtube and get stuck there causing it to leak because it isn't properly sealed. Solution: a darning needle to fish (gently I might add) around the gtube and see what you can find.

I figured Lucas would not enjoy this process and be too squirmy while awake so at 6am this morning off I went to his room. Took off the disgusting bandage, set up my flashlight (could have really used a head lamp) and set to work. It took all of about a minute to pull out a little disgusting mass of spinach.

Seriously! All that grossness because one little piece snuck through.

Lesson of the day: Even when you think it's blended....keep blending!