I hope it’s ok to post this - I’m not asking for medical advice and we are being seen by healthcare professionals.
Our little boy (10 months) started refusing fluids after getting norovirus. The issue became progressively worse to the point where he was refused all fluids for more than 24 hours and we recently spent a week in hospital with him being NG fed his milk. He’s been switched to a lactose free temporarily too. Once he was being fed via NG he was back to his happy self, wet and dirty nappies good. He pulled his tube out one afternoon (again) and they decided to see how he got on without it. By this point he’d started to accept small amounts of fluid orally (not milk but water or squash). So we were discharged in the hope that he’d continue to up his oral fluid intake.
This hasn’t happened though. We’ve been advised he needs approx 750mls fluids a day. He’s getting around 400-450mls daily and that’s only with considerable pushing from us. Milk-wise it’s less than this as he’s refusing all bottles so most of what he gets is from his weetabix made with his milk. He’s due to be reviewed next week by the dietician (originally they were going to wait 6 weeks!) but I feel so torn. On the one hand I’d really like to avoid another admission and NG tube (which he’d likely have to come home with), but every day is such a battle at the moment. Our whole day is governed by how we can try to get any fluids into him and we are constantly concerned he isn’t getting enough. Let alone the fact that his milk is less than 300mls a day when his whole life our understanding has been that this should be his primary source of nutrition until 1. Or feels like every day we are teetering on whether he might be just getting by with fluids or whether he’s actually being deprived of what he needs.
I should say, throughout all of this he’s eating well - solids-wise. But unfortunately he is often preferring dry foods he can feed himself which doesn’t help with fluid intake. His wet nappies haven’t been too bad since we came home from hospital which adds to my confusion.
I’m just hoping for some opinions from other parents/ people who are educated around babies food intake and needs. On the on hand I’m thinking we probably just need to accept he may need to be tube fed for a while, but the other part of me is hesitant because prior to a few weeks ago we had a happy healthy baby who ate and drank well.
Thanks for reading