Thursday, July 27, 2006

Better Living through Chemistry?

Since Ellie's gut has shown us that it has a limit to the amount of breast milk that it can tolerate, her GI doctor has suggested that we try to feed her a specialized formula for kids with gut problems called Elecare that is made up of a very simple formula of food that is easily digested by kids who have short gut.

For the next three or four days we are going to run some Elecare through Ellie (should have named it Ellie-care) and see how much she can tolerate. There is a chance that she will be able to process a lot more of this formula than she can milk and if so, we may be able to make a cocktail that mixes milk and formula to help her eat more than she is eating right now.

Whether a success in this approach would stop the need for more surgery is another question. For right now, we'd like to see her handle more food and see how her gut reacts. It is a lot less invasive to feed her different food than cut her open again, so we are on board with this approach.

she has had two Elecare bottles so far without any negative signs. We just need to watch and wait.

No comments: