Hopeful

Last Thursday (2/5) we finally had an appointment with a GI specialist from Children's Memorial Hospital to figure out what is going on with Luke. The appointment started off a little scary because the first thing they did was weight him. He had been weighed at his 9 month appt. on 12/22 and he weighed 17 lbs. 2 oz. When they weighed him 1 1/2 months later, he weighed 17 lbs. 5 oz...only gaining 3 oz. in that time which is definitely not enough.
We met the doctor, he totally reminded me of the doctor on the show House, very focused on his job and determined to figure out why Luke isn't eating. He asked us tons of questions and gave us a game plan which was what we needed to feel like we were actually going to get him the help that he needs. All of those people came in from the state to evaluate him and we've had ZERO services from them.
We've stopped feeding him his formula, instead he's drinking Pediasure with Fiber, it has 2 times the calories of formula. He also said I need to continue nursing as often as possible, which at this point, I am really ready to be done. He said that we need to stop feeding him in the middle of the night (all 3-4 feedings) so that he will stop eating in the night and start eating more during the day. We are also going to start seeing their speech and OT therapists and start attending an intensive feeding clinic they have at the hospital in the hopes they can get him to start eating solid foods. They will evaluate how all of this goes and see if he is making significant enough gains. If he is, great. If not, they will consider tube feeding him in order to build up some bulk in him and load him with calories.
We've been doing these changes for 5 days now and things are going well. He has accepted the change in the Pediasure for the most part. Since he's getting more calories during the day, we've gotten down to 1-2 feedings in a night. That is such a huge change in my life, a very welcome change :) We're going to the hospital this morning to have an evaluation by the OT and we're supposed to bring him hungry so we'll see what happens. We're both hopeful and know that we're at the right place where we will get some help.