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I hate gas

When your baby is screaming in pain, there is nothing you wouldn't do to make their pain stop.  With G-tubing, poor Evie gets more gas than usual in her little tummy.  Having been pregnant, I know a thing or two about super gas, so I felt for her.

For some reason no one told me about venting with a G-tube after she had the surgery.  So at first we tried gripe water and gas relief drops (simethicone).  Gripe water did nothing, and also made her choke.  Simethicone is actually a beautiful thing, but only gave her temporary relief.  Bicycling her legs helped a bit, but really it's not good enough for a g-tube baby.

Enter addicted-to-the-Internet mommy.  I've been reading all that I can find about gas and about G-tubes.  I started to read about people "venting," and they weren't talking about all the snow we have been getting.

http://notreligious.typepad.com/.a/6a00e552e3404e88330147e189cceb970b-800wi

I started wondering if I had been missing out on a way to help Evie.  When I asked the GI doc about this, she said, oh sure, I'll have the nurse teach you.  I thought, why didn't they tell me about this in the first place!!!  All it involves is using a large 60 ml syringe plugged into the G-tube and letting the air come out of her stomach.  The first time I did it, I didn't take the cap off the syringe and wondered why it didn't work.  Haha.  The second time I did it, it rocked my world. The air bubbles just shot out of the tube.  Seeing stomach contents of my baby isn't such a big deal, because it's just formula.  Then you use the plunger to slowly put the stomach contents back in.  And then baby is happy, so mommy is happy!
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/gfD5J4Ok7ok/maxresdefault.jpg
from St. Louis Childrens Hospital

I kind of feel lucky that I can so definitively help my child with gas, while other mommies have to wait for the gas to work its way out.  That's one upside to having a G-tube, at least!

Comments

  1. This is probably TMI, but I wish I had as easy a way to get the gas out of my tummy sometimes. But yay for happy baby and mommy!

    ReplyDelete

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