Finn's recovery

So far Finn is healing really well from his surgery. The other day he ate bacon, pickles, and cheese for breakfast. It was awesome!! We're used to him only eating yogurt, Boost, baby foods, and cereals (because those were about the only things that wouldn't make him puke). Speaking of puke... It has been 3 whole weeks since Finn has puked. Let me just say that it has been glorious!!!! No more plastic table cloth under his crib.

Finn is a 100% different toddler now too. He is way happier and actually enjoys sitting down and eating. Meal times used to just include everyone except Finn because he never wanted to sit up and eat with us, so I'd just let him run around and do his thing. Now he loves meal times and will actually tell us when he wants to eat (I think his hunger signals were so screwed up that he never knew what was going on).

Finn enjoying a pickle, and me with a giant cold sore on my face because of a little stress.

It's probably hard to visualize what a duodenal web blockage is, so here are some pictures of Finn's scope and what the blockage looked like.

His doctor couldn't even get the scope through that tiny hole. No wonder solid foods couldn't pass through.

This is what a duodenal web blockage looks like.

I'm not going to lie... I kind of felt somewhat crazy when we didn't know what was going on with Finn. Being a first-time mom and trying to not be too paranoid is pretty hard. I would tell people I couldn't feed Finn solid foods because he would throw them up hours later. I felt like they just kind of looked at me like, "yeah right, he's probably just spitting up a little, no big deal." I had one nurse tell me that he just needed to chew his food better so he wouldn't throw up. Really?! That one kind of made me a little angry.

Thinking back, I still can't believe it took 18 months to figure out what Finn had. It's not like I wasn't bugging his doctors non-stop either. I don't particularly blame them though. He did have an upper GI done when he was 2 days old because they suspected a blockage, but the images of his intestines came back clear. I think that's why his doctors thought it was anything besides a blockage. They just kind of discounted it because he had already had an upper GI. All I know, is that if your baby is still puking regularly at 12 months take it into your own hands and demand that the doctor do a scope or upper GI. I was just trying to be patient and wait it out because various doctors said that he would probably just grow out of it. I guess I just learned patience by going through this. Thank goodness no permanent damage was done to Finn because of this (besides a psychological hate of food). Otherwise I might be singing a different tune...

Only 2 more nights getting tube feeds!