To or not To tube...

"To Tube or not to tube, that is the question..."

Apologies to William Shakespeare of course but Hamlet goes on to wonder if it's better to go on fighting or basically call it a day. That pretty much sums up the situation at the moment with T.

We got our samples of the Vivonex formula on Friday and I got sooo excited to discover that if T could drink 1 litre of the formula a day then he'd be covering his daily levels of protein, vitamins and minerals. Yes, that leaves fats and carbs but I figured a couple of 'doses' of cake a day would see to that issue.

He was drinking around 600-700mls a day already with no major 'fall off' in his food intake. Trust me, I'd be able to tell if his eating went from abysmal to non-existent! So maybe we could do 1000 mls instead, not too huge a jump really???

They recommended that you use milk shake syrup to flavour the formula - as it's so revolting but no one will tell you that! So I achieved the almost impossible and found two different flavours of milkshake powder which were free of dairy and soy - who makes dairy and soy free milkshakes anyway??!

What I didn't count on were 3 different factors -
T basically eats homemade food only. Even the 'natural flavourings' of these powders seemed too strong for him. He drank about 30 mls of each flavour before declaring his 'mouth blurch'. A weakened solution simply meant he could taste the formula!

I did try him with the flavourings in his current formula so I'd know it was the flavouring he was reacting to not the formula itself. Strawberry and banana both had the same result. I managed to find an actual syrup today at a different supermarket and it was chocolate so I bought that too, with the same result.

The other factor I didn't take into account was the fact that the Vivonex formula itself is really nasty! Poor T - one mouthful and he's spitting frantically on the floor (poor Mummy too!!) and then racing off to the bathroom with a cup. That's where the only tap is that he can turn on!
The face he made each time we tried it would have been hilarious except that I was looking at this formula as the Holy Grail to save us from the tube.

The last factor I forgot to consider is that his normal formula consumption is around 400-500mls a day. The hot weather suddenly disappeared over the weekend and his consumption dropped equally suddenly. 400-500 mls to 1 litre is a huge jump and pretty much impossible to0 ask him to do - and we're heading into winter...

I felt quite desperate about the situation over this weekend but as P said "This is T we're talking about, of course it's not simple!"

And so I'm back to the drawing board to see if I can pull a gradual change in formulas, 10 mls in 190, 20 mls in 180 etc. I'm not holding my breath - and all of this has pretty much scraped the bottom of the barrel in terms of remaining tricks to try to avoid needing tube feeds.
At least the taste won't matter if it's tube fed!

And in the meantime - anyone for a milkshake? We can now do strawberry, banana and chocolate!!