And The Fun Continues...

And it gets even more fun!
I went to check on T last night, make sure his tubing was together, see how much milk was left in the container - how much longer til I can go to bed etc. He sat up and started retching!! Full blown, hard retching! It was 11:45pm so not dinner causing the problem.

Stopped the pump, tried venting his tummy - thinking maybe lots of air making him feel sick but no, checked what was left in his tummy - thinking maybe for some reason he wasn't processing it fast enough and was getting over full - very little in there.

So we settled him back down - and reduced the pump flow from 90ml/hr to 80ml/hr.

Thinking about it this morning the other times he's been at 90ml/hr the tubing's come apart at some point in the night. We'd reduced him a little and been increasing by 5ml/hr for the last few nights to see if the pressure was causing the problems. So maybe his tummy can't handle that flow rate?

The trouble is, he needs to get 900-1000 mls over night. It's supposed to be given over 10 hours. You simply can't do it in 10 hours if you go below 90 ml/hr. If it runs too long in the morning then he's fuller and won't eat breakfast. Trying to start it earlier is a mission since we're already starting about 15 mins late usually.

He hates having his tummy cleaned at the moment which has to be done daily so I'm just chucking him the bath every night. But he screams yells and fights! So dinner tends to be late and so it goes on...P's had a lot of rehearsals lately so it's been just me doing the whole bath, dinner, bed routine for all 3 - and N always creates every inch of the way!

The volume at a slower rate means I have to stay up later to change the containers over. The dietician says the formula can only be hung for 8 hours at a stretch, the Nutricia people say 4 hours at a stretch for Neocate/Pepti Junior. Someone has to get up which ever way you cut it with a 10 hour feed and max 8 hour hang time.
What we're doing is a 4 hour hang, ending around midnight and then a 6 hour hang - with freshly made formula to up the ante.
So I'm not getting to bed before midnight, often 12:30 - 1am and then having to be up at 6:30 - 7. But I don't want less sleep!

If I get up in the middle of the night I always have big trouble going back to sleep - P's always done the 2am feeds when the kids were babies. But he's out with lots of late rehearsals at the moment so it's not like he has the option of going to bed early to compensate for the broken night - and he's got some on going health issues right now so he doesn't need to chuck sleep deprivation into the mix to confuse everything. If I got to bed early to make up for it, then N, who often doesn't go to sleep until 10:30 or so, will have run of the house when P's out and he WILL create trouble.

So we're sort of stuffed right now. If I complain about how tired I am then that just pushes them along with the 'see, be tough, he has to eat more, then we can reduce the volume overnight' theme. I'm determined he needs to be given his own time - so I guess I just suck it up right now.
But this is just sooo tiring and frustrating.

We'll give him the weekend and then try 90ml/hr again - hopefully it'll work this time!