Ryan's reflux story

As I wrote a few weeks ago, Ryan has a particularly bad case of acid reflux, and he's on medication for the acid part. But the reflux was still pretty voluminous, at each feeding and basically all the waking day, so his doctor ordered some tests to see if his anatomy was flawed.


Two weeks ago we took Ryan into the hospital's radiology department, where they put a tube into his stomach through his nose, and inserted barium into his digestive system while they took x-rays. This happened while he was strapped onto a board with his arms above his head, and he hadn't eaten in five hours. So he was happy. And after he spit up a bunch of barium, they took a chest x-ray that showed his reflux was powerful enough that he was aspirating some of it – sucking it into his lungs. This puts him at risk for pneumonia.


Normally this would be a reason to correct the reflux surgically. But we're not doing that, because he doesn't meet any of the other indicators: He's gaining weight, he doesn't cough without cause (usually once during a feeding) and he's sleeping well. And he doesn't actually have pneumonia. But to avoid this, we're thickening his feedings with a tablespoon of rice cereal, twice a day.


We're supposed to be doing the cereal three times a day, but as you'll see in this video, it takes so dang long to get that one tablespoon down him that we can only do it twice or we'd never do anything else. But at least he's learning early to play with his food.