Stage 1!

In just under a week, Blaise has gone from being willing to eat rice cereal to demanding to be fed her rice cereal as soon as it's in sight. Seriously. She kind of eats like a Klingon (or a Viking, for those of you who aren't into Star Trek), with a full range of bellows, barbaric yawps, and righteous fury when the spoonbearer does not bear the spoon quickly apace.

For one thing, this is hilarious...my daughter eats lunch like she's the destroyer of worlds. For another thing, this means she's doing okay with solid food. No sign of any reaction after several days, so after talking with her team at CAIR (the Center for Advanced Intestinal Rehabilitation) we got the green light to try "Stage 1" baby foods as we see fit. This means pureed fruits and veggies for the most part, which includes a wide range of items that don't taste like Elecare. This also means that we get to try out one of our cooler new-baby presents:


Meet the "Beaba Babycook." This handy-dandy kitchen aid steams and purees the food of your choice in a couple of minutes. We can now turn basically anything we want into a pourable liquid! We decided to start with some apples...pretty sweet-tasting, easy to get, and pectin turns out to be a very good thing to give kids with short-bowel for a bunch of reasons. One button push later, and...
Voila! Blaise gets to try out homemade applesauce tomorrow! Who knows what she'll think of it, of course, but we can't wait to give it a shot. From here, we get to move on to other starter foods so long as Blaise doesn't show any signs of a bad allergy/intolerance. Sweet potatoes, peas, bananas, and lots and lots of laundry. We have to be a bit more cautious than usual (5-7 days between new things instead of 3-5) but this is seriously fun. Watching Blaise take in new stuff is always a good time, and this is a particularly broad array of new experiences for her to check out.

In other news, her last round of labs looks very good, save for signs of a slight calcium deficiency. This isn't uncommon for SBS patients and it looks like all we have to do is give her some calcium carbonate (think Tums) through her g-tube. Besides that little tweak, Blaise checks out pretty well.

On to new food!