Here in New Zealand, once again something has hit the news in a very sensational (and what would appear an unprofessional reporting) way. The issue really ought to be looking at the method of reporting but instead it has once again split the community on breast versus bottle feeding.
Now I've blogged on all of that before so I'm not going there again right now. But the timing strikes hard because it's also International Tube Feeding Awareness Week.
While others are going on about the rights and wrongs of breast or bottle (and who is saying what's actually IN the bottle - this particular catalyst was showing a father bottle feeding and I wasn't aware a father had any other feeding options available!) and the sense of isolation and lack of community support for bottle feeders - let's spare a thought for those who would love to even have those options.
As I say at the top - who cares HOW you actually get it in - really the situation you find yourself in when you can't get it in, when you can't feed your baby or child is thousand times worse.
The looks you get when you whip out a bottle (and I've been there a million times before) is nothing compared with taking a kid with an NG tube round the supermarket, when you have your 6 yr old in a pushchair and you kneel beside them as you clean your hands, prepare tubing and hook lengths of tubing directly to your child's stomach. People don't just give you dirty looks - they look as if you just might kill them if you so much as breathe in heir direction.
Tube feeding is not necessarily an end of life decision (although I have had one person suggest it would have been kinder to let my 6 yr old die as he runs to the car, carrying his feeding pump over his arm) but can in fact be a life-giving, life-restoring decision.
In our case, for T, it has meant the difference between a 3 3/4 yr old who got so tired with ordinary minimal play he put himself to bed each day to a 6 3/4 yr old kid who is within a few months of being able to go to school. If you couldn't find him you'd usually find him curled up asleep somewhere, worn out by simple everyday efforts. His development was falling behind. We couldn't go anywhere requiring him to walk longer than about 15 mins or else we'd have to take the pushchair.
When you bottle feed people will say to you that - you should have tried harder, longer, taken this or that, you could have done it if you had wanted to and so on. But that's nowhere near as soul-destroying as the comments you collect when your child won't eat - I can make him eat, you just have to show them who the boss is, if you feed him x, don't feed him y, have you tried p, q and w. You collect the you just aren't trying comments too - and when you have just had your child weighed and they've lost weight AGAIN and just rejected AGAIN a meal you've cooked of their favourite something, presented the best way you can to tempt them along those comments will cut you to the quick more than any of the comments I got while bottle feeding.
I don't normally post pictures of the kids on here to protect all of us from internet nasties and
I will remove them in a week or so so don't be surprised if you come back and find them gone.
But in the interests of Tube Feeding Awareness ( and remembering that actually it's getting the nutrition in not the delivery method that's really the most important!) here is just part of T's feeding journey.
Tube feeding in it's various forms has been a central part of T's life. It has been a life-saver as an infant.
It hasn't stopped him doing normal things - his health has done that.
But tube feeding has transformed him, changed him, enabled him to grow, develop and thrive.
Truly, it doesn't matter how you get it into him - surely the bottom line is that you do somehow!
And so I'm going to try and put in this year's Tube Feeding Awareness video. You'd be hard placed to pick which kid or person is the "tubie" in some of these pictures. They look good because they are able to get their nutrition. There are hundreds of reasons why someone might need tube feeding.
As one mother has said - better understanding of tube feeding would mean the end of isolation and exclusion. It would mean acceptance. It would mean support.
Isn't that what we all need in our feeding journeys?
Thank you for this post. I've know as little babies they might need to be tube fed, but I really (and this is wrong of me) never thought of it beyond that. My niece was 14 weeks early and so was tube fed for a few months.
ReplyDeleteI don't have to tube feed, but I too get the comments for my picky almost 2 year old that I just have to force him to eat it & don't give him anything else until he eats the other stuff. Well as the mom of a child who is low iron, I'll do what it takes for him to get whatever food he'll eat into him. If that means pureeing veggies and mixing them with applesauce I will. I get told all the time that he won't starve himself, but he WILL. I did the same thing as a young child.
Thank you for this post. And I would like there to be more awareness about this.
Who cares HOW you get it in? Too True!