21 Days of Gratitude - Day 14 - Being able to Eat!

Food play

I am finding the 21 Days of Gratitude such a true blessing, I am looking for more blessings in my day and my hubby points it out too. I do have my challenges but at the end of the day I can look back and see what blessings there are. Today, my highlights were my friends, receiving a encouraging phone call and attending a 3 year old birthday party and seeing my little lady laugh and giggle, loving life. I feel the cool breeze on my face and stand and gaze to the sky and just breathe, a moment all mine. 

Well, we are on a bit of an adventure with Faith's feeding progression at the moment. After talking to the speech pathologist in Brisbane we decided that we needed to figure out when we are to jump in and take out Faith's NG tube. We could go on like this forever so we need to get it done. Yes, very exciting but daunting. So it's decided on the 28th November we are heading back to Brisbane to stay at a apartment near the speech pathologist and we are going to take out the NG tube on the 29th November and for the next 4 days have no NG tube and see what we can do. This is really BIG, Faith has had a NG tube for over a year and for the next two and a bit weeks we have to push as hard as we can with tastes and textures. On Thursday last week she tasted pear on her drink bottle and tasted her blended diet (not a bad taste, very bland considering what is in it). And every day since we retry tastes and introduce new ones. It has been a gentle rather pushed progression of carrot, pear, apricot puree in water. Ensuring we have a defined breakfast, morning, lunch, afternoon, dinner and supper food breaks. And of course keep feeding her her blend minus any commercial formula (energivit). The gastrointestinal doctor said that we should remove the formula (energivit) since it is upsetting her tummy so much.

Food is friend not foe!

The days are intense and if I thought I was busy before I was wrong because now I have barely enough time to eat in a day. Let alone stop and think, I just do. My brain is in overload of what we need to achieve and we are also trying to arrange eat dates with other little people as we need Faith to start eating even small amounts. I am so grateful to my friends for helping me on this one, particularly this one friend, whose daughter had a NG tube for a long time due to a heart condition. We went to her 3rd birthday party this afternoon and she ate and ate, she now has no NG tube. So there is great hope. She is doing wonderfully and loving tastes and textures of food. A testament to devotion and perseverance of a family to get her dear one off the NG tube onto food. She understands the hard work that goes into a day. I must admit I don't have much patience with anything else at the moment, I tend to work quickly, talk quickly and get stressed very easily. I am trying to take my time but I fear that if I do then I will miss an opportunity to get Faith to try a yummy food and all the effort, time and money that will be put in will all be vain. I need to trust God that it is going to be ok and he will give me the strength to push on. I really didn't think that this time last week Faith would be tasting food and progressing so well. I don't think I will ever take eating for granted again, the blessings of just being able to lick a ice cream cone without wanting to gag or even fighting against others eating. So the next time you have drink of milk or eat a chocolate just stop for a moment and think how much it is a blessing it is to be able to eat!