Blended Diet Faith Style

What is a blended diet?
It is when you blend food in a high power blender and push it through a feeding tube. We choose to use the Vitamix Blender. 

Where did we purchase our Vitamix?

We purchased it through Raw Blend. The were fast with delivery and we received quite a few extras.

What has it achieved for Faith?

• Faith's hair has grown. Her hair went from fine to thicker curls.
• Her nails are stronger. Faith's nails used to be quite weak and in combination with the blended diet and extra salt, her nails grew stronger.
• Faith weight increased slowly and stayed on. It is still a battle and we are always tweaking her blend but it works.
• Faith has a healthy glow to her skin.
• We found when Faith was having a lot of commercial formula her vomits were huge and frequent. She stills vomits daily and this is due to many reasons but we have seen less daily vomited with a blended diet. 
• Faith would wake many times unwell and now she has blended food her sleeping improved.
• General well being improved.  

How often do we blend? We blend once every two weeks and freeze the blended food. We find this works bests for us.

A Family Affair
Blending at our house is a family affair. We all have a job whether buying, cooking, blending, or sieving. 

It has taken us a long time to find the perfect blend for Faith but we are at last happy with it.

What syringes do we use?

We use Baxa 20ml syringes as we find that works best for us.

'Blend Burnout'
The blended diet is hard work and we all get 'blend burnout' every now and then. It is worth it as we see less vomit and Faith grow. That is the reward for all the hard work.

What can go wrong?
When Faith had her NG Tube we only got it clogged once or twice and that was due to some probiotic that went clumpy. We were always careful the NG tube was inserted correctly. 

We haven't had any blockages with the Mic-Key or Bard Buttons.

How we travel with blended food
When we travel we have a car fridge so the blend stays cool and fresh. We use the Engel fridge/freezer.

We are currently in the process of organising an additional battery to our 4WD as with the fridge/freezer and exploring the possibility of a car hoist for Faith's wheel chair we would drain the battery. Also, as soon as the ignition is turned off the fridge/freezer turns off.