Day 28

Alisha weighed 30.13lbs. She drank 90mls after every meal. Today we were working with one of the doctors filling in for Britney. I'm catching up on the blog again and I have to say that I remember most about this day was that it was Larraine's last official day. I was sad to see her go and I know that her being there made all of the difference to me. I really like and get along with the other moms too but they had more plans or less holes in their schedules family visiting and things and so Larraine and I were together more often. I loved that she liked to talk and joke around. I had already bought some books before Larraine and I really started talking. I had things to do and I still did a lot with Mataya . Larraine is what some older folks call a kick in the pants!! She has always worked with lots of people and has really fun ways of saying things. In fact I think I have heard her call people a kick in the pants.. Larraine's not old though, she can't be we are just about the same age. ;) Anyway, Mataya and I really enjoyed being with her.

Plus Larraine leaving brought up how close we are to leaving and on this particular day Alisha refused to eat her "chewables". The doctor tried a few techniques after a feeding or two that I did with Alisha that just didn't go over very well. She ate all of the pureed food and just about none of the "chewables." She kept saying things to me during the meal about how she only wanted to eat the two pureed foods or "Only these two they are faster." Meaning I don't have to chew those so that's all I want to eat...

I cried during my turn at the parents meeting that day. We meet together with our wonderful Pam every Friday to ramp up for the weekend and every Monday to cover how our weekends went. It seems that the Friday meetings are always more teary then the Monday ones.. Anyway, I was looking at Larraine for the last time across the table and was kinda trying not to look at her. It didn't seem to matter at all who I looked at I know that I will miss them all!!! Alisha was going backwards with the chewables that she was eating fine the day before. The weekend was coming up and we really need to fix this before we go home with not many days left. I was sitting across the table from Anne and her husband-- Anne took us to New York and she went every weekend that she has been here!! She is always fun to talk to but the thing that I don't think that I have mentioned about Anne is that it is her second time here. That is fine but the part about Anne's story that scares me is that they were just starting to get the "chewables" when they left and then totally lost them when they got home. So it's been puree and pasta for a year until they came back and had a really big go at chewables this year. Their son is doing great by the way!!!

I was just so scared of a year on puree to come back to get chewables and work on self feeding. while at the same time feeling ungrateful for all the solid improvement made in just a few sort weeks!!! Alisha is not using her feeding pump at all!!!! She drinks all of her formula that she was getting pumped before and on top of that she eats several pureed meals. She used to drink ice water and that was all and nibble on things that never really added up to much. Three crackers in one day would have me excited for a whole week!!! I remember the doctor telling me not to worry about feeding her chewables over the weekend just keep all of the purees going and keep her excepting those and that he would have a plan on Monday. I remember feeling conflicted about that. I felt that I was loosing too much time and that I didn't have enough left to loose and at the same time feeling some relief because I knew that I needed a better plan then what we currently had or I was going to in effect teach her to continue to refuse all the chewables all weekend and be very frustrated about it. I didn't feel that I had a real right choice to make... beyond not going to the beach and really putting everything into this weekend.

So going all puree is easy. At this point I feel that if I can make it a cake or pancake batter consistency then for the most part she will eat it. I also remember Brittney telling me that I should really be giving her more Puree and not so much baby food. So, no fault of Brittney's, I pureed up some frozen baked french fries. I was choosing to get excited about what Alisha was eating and that we have been advised to when possible puree up whatever the family is eating.

That sounded so freeing to me. So I went with that!! Sadly, here's how it turned out.. I blended just the fries at first. That was way too thick and I was expecting that so I added some silk milk. Still too thick so I added some mayo. Some people have mayo with their fries It's kinda bland and liquidish....and still too thick and there is limit on how much mayo I was willing to use. (this is starting to sound like a children's book.. LOL!!) So I thought ok fine catchup I was afraid of using it at first because it does have quite a kick but Alisha does like Spaghetti sauce. So the catchup was the finishing touch. Alisha did great!! She actually ate a few bites of my yucky crazy concoction.. and peas.. Then well, it didn't stay down. So I cleaned up and fed her the rest of the peas.

Later that night I went on line looking up ice cube trays with lids and there were puree cook books too. So I went to my library's web site and requested a ton of puree cookbooks!!!!