Failure to Thrive

When I tell my friends or acquaintances about Mason's most current issues with  "Failure to Thrive" I mostly hear, "That would be a great movie title."  Ha ha.  It is true.  However, to many children in the US, that diagnosis is a reality.  How does a mother deal with the news that a child she spends so much time trying to help and encourage has failed to thrive?  It is not an easy question to answer.  I find myself feeling like a failure.

However, I must remember the extraordinary feats he has overcome to be standing, running, talking, going to school, and even eating at all.  Yes, we have come a long way.  So despite the issues I am  dealing with now, I cannot let the phrase on a doctor's paper deter me from all the good I am doing with a special needs son.  OK, he hasn't gained all the weight he needed to this year, but we are on a very wavy tight rope trying to balance proper tube feeds with oral feeds.  When we are in a hospital it takes a team of doctors, therapists, and nutritionists to balance this dilemma, so it is easy to see how a single mother of four finds it very difficult to walk across this tight rope alone all the time.  Right?!

Well, for all those mothers of g-tube fed children let's not get discouraged with feeding issues.  Let's keep moving forward and enjoy the miracles our children are and hope daily for some aspect of our children to thrive, even if it isn't weight gain. 

Let's figure this out together.