New Feeding Schedule… Success?

As all of you know, Wendy has never eaten by mouth. She started off with an NG tube when she was born and at 6 weeks old had a G tube put in and has fed by a pump ever since.


We introduced Wendy to baby food several months back and had recently worked up to about a jar a day, in 2-3 feeding sessions.


Yesterday, this mama decided she was tired of dragging around an IV pole all day, every day. It makes me simplest task of walking from room to room difficult. So I devised a plan. I added up the amount of calories Wendy was taking in every day and decided to figure out a new feeding plan so she would be taking in as many (or more) calories than she was and doing it in a more convenient time frame.


Before yesterday, Wendy was fed 85mL every 3 hours at 65mL an hour. Which meant she only had about an hour and a half between feeds and honestly, it wasn’t worth the trouble to turn the pump off, unhook her, hook her back up, and turn the pump back on during that amount of time. So I decided to go up to 100mL a feed and do 6 feeds a day every 3 hours between 3pm-6am. That put her up to 600mL of formula VS the 680mL she was getting before. I also added in a quick 30min 30mL feed at 11am, and also 2 feeds of baby food, at 9am and 1pm (which spaced it out so her tummy wasn’t still full of formula or fixing to be pumped full of formula). I also changed the caloric intake of each feed.

As the week goes on, I will weigh her and as long as she is gaining, we will continue on this schedule. If not, we will try something different. All I know is, I’m tired of losing quality time with my baby because of her feeding all the time.