Pounding it out!
Well Stasik has been here in the US for 4 days. It is amazing the progress we have seen in that short time. We have been very inquisitive with what he needs and we have tried to provide everything that the doctors tell us to. I was told on Saturday that a good rule of thumb for growth was to feed him 40 calories per inch of height. He is 29 inches long and 1160 calories seems like a daunting task. Finding baby food with a lot of calories is tough, but the formula has really helped to fill in the calories between meals. What makes the process more difficult is that he still tends to throw food up sporadically. Anything can trigger a Mt. Vesuvius type eruption and the flow could go on for hours. Some days he keeps it all down and other days it just comes up. 
We are meeting with a GI specialist soon and hoping to figure out why this is happening. We are documenting all foods we give him, but have not been able to narrow anything down specifically. Even with the occasional, long lasting flow of food lava, we still manage to keep about 800-900 calories in him. Some of you may remember that when we met Stasik, which seems so long ago, he weighed about 12 pounds. Debbie had him for a week in the Ukraine and he was able to gain some weight even with the limited food available to her. At our first doctor’s appointment he weighed 14.1 pounds and now in just 3 days is up to 15.3. He smiles all the time with the occasional fits when feeding time is finished. A few distractions and he will forget all about it, though. He is sleeping 12 hours a night and now has a ton of energy. It is very difficult to keep him still. What the people in the Ukraine do not understand is that these special children have plenty of ability; they just need people to give them the opportunity to use it.
Well Stasik has been here in the US for 4 days. It is amazing the progress we have seen in that short time. We have been very inquisitive with what he needs and we have tried to provide everything that the doctors tell us to. I was told on Saturday that a good rule of thumb for growth was to feed him 40 calories per inch of height. He is 29 inches long and 1160 calories seems like a daunting task. Finding baby food with a lot of calories is tough, but the formula has really helped to fill in the calories between meals. What makes the process more difficult is that he still tends to throw food up sporadically. Anything can trigger a Mt. Vesuvius type eruption and the flow could go on for hours. Some days he keeps it all down and other days it just comes up. 
We are meeting with a GI specialist soon and hoping to figure out why this is happening. We are documenting all foods we give him, but have not been able to narrow anything down specifically. Even with the occasional, long lasting flow of food lava, we still manage to keep about 800-900 calories in him. Some of you may remember that when we met Stasik, which seems so long ago, he weighed about 12 pounds. Debbie had him for a week in the Ukraine and he was able to gain some weight even with the limited food available to her. At our first doctor’s appointment he weighed 14.1 pounds and now in just 3 days is up to 15.3. He smiles all the time with the occasional fits when feeding time is finished. A few distractions and he will forget all about it, though. He is sleeping 12 hours a night and now has a ton of energy. It is very difficult to keep him still. What the people in the Ukraine do not understand is that these special children have plenty of ability; they just need people to give them the opportunity to use it.
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