It was a wild week at the Smith household. Sweet baby boy had his usual physical therapy and speech therapy appointments and we met with pediatric general surgery to talk about having his hernias repaired and g-tube removed.
Speech therapy went well. We mostly talked about how to move forward given a certain small person has decided that he’s a big boy and doesn’t use bottles any more. We both agreed that syringe feeding him isn’t the best for the long term, but it can be a bridge to teaching him how to use an open cup and it won’t be forever.
In PT we’re still working on a lot of the same skills. Sumner is one of those kids who needs to work on something over and over until it clicks. BUT… when it does click, he’s unstoppable. We’re working on getting into sitting on his own, pulling himself up to standing with furniture, and crawling on hands and knees. He’ll get there when he’s ready.
The big appointment of the week was with surgery. We found out that Sumner has hernias when his g-tube was placed. The surgeon said that we should wait until he was off steroids for at least six months before getting them fixed. We had decided to wait until we knew if he needed eye surgery this year. It turns out that he does need eye surgery and our ophthalmologist is open to scheduling her procedure at the same time as the hernia repair to minimize Sumner’s general anesthesia exposure. So, we got a STAT referral to surgery in Denver since Sumner’s last surgery was done in Colorado Springs due to the adoption.
The surgeon was super nice and thorough. The surprise was that he’s not sure if Sumner has hernias because he couldn’t feel them and we’ve never seen a bulge. (We’ve been on the look out for one this entire time.) The plan is for him to go in laparoscopically to check them out first. Then he’ll make the decision on if there is anything that needs fixing. Once that’s done, he’ll suture the g-tube closed. After looking at it, he doesn’t think that it’ll close on it’s own because it’s too established. It’ll be nice for Sumner to be completely tube free.
Lastly, we got an email from the pulmonologist about the overnight oxygen study that we did a week ago. Sumner was approved to be off oxygen. WOOT! We’ll keep the unit at home until we see the doctor again in December, but things are definitely going in the right direction.
Grandma also visited from Michigan this past week and I had stocked up on berries — her favorite. I decided to use the leftovers and made Sumner a berry power bowl for some of his breakfasts this week. With his three meals and two snacks per day, supplementing our Yumi delivery with homemade food is helping us to keep our budget in check.
Ingredients
- 300 g strawberries
- 189 g raspberries
- 180 g blueberry
- 15 mL honey
- 16 g walnut butter
- 161 mL coconut milk
Directions
- Place strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and honey into a heavy bottomed pan. You might want to add a splash of water. Bring to a boil and stir frequently. Cook until all of the berries have disintegrated and the volume is reduced by half. It’ll look like a jammy berry syrup.
- Allow the berry mixture to cool to room temperature. Then stir in the coconut milk and walnut butter.
- Evenly portion into five containers and refrigerate.
Notes
- If the berry mixture is still chunky, you may want to run it through a food processor.
- Sumner is over a year old and we experiment with honey and nut butters. A good alternative to the honey may be agave syrup, maple syrup, or dates. I haven’t tried these for this recipe, but have used them in others for him.
- When we’re doing these jars for breakfast, I add a tablespoon of oatmeal and a serving of probiotics.
- Each serving is approximately 128 calories.
Homespun in Colorado 