Real food through a feeding tube

I started this post over a month ago, but still wanted to post it in case it might be helpful to another family who wants provide real food for someone with a feeding tube.  I couldn't find too many resources on it myself, so with our nurses' help we came up with a system that worked for us. 

I have become a firm believer in the value of real, whole foods.  I am so thankful that I was able to provide milk for Oliver, and that we never had to give him formula.  (Yes, I pumped milk for over a year.  And by that I mean I pumped essentially 100% of my milk for Oliver - at most he was able to nurse two ounces a day, and that happened only rarely in the few months just after he was born.  And while I have the utmost respect for mothers who choose to pump when they return to work, this was very different.  Pumping every 3 hours for a sick baby who lacks stamina to nurse on his own even though he has the desire to is very different.)

When my milk supply started to decline I was determined to start him on "solids" just as I would a "normal" baby, especially since as far as we could tell his digestive system was working perfectly fine.  I approached his baby food the same way I did for the girls, except that we had the challenge of liquifying it enough to go through the feeding pump and g-tube.  I am so very thankful for my BlendTec blender that we got last year - it did this job wonderfully!  I LOVE my blender.

I chose to use simple (but extremely nutritional), traditional chicken stock that I made from "happy" free-range, organic chickens as the added liquid.  Oliver got to "eat" avocados, brown rice, beet greens, quinoa, sweet potato, butternut squash, and bananas.

Here's the chicken stock (with liver for iron and some meat bits too) and avocados.  Yum.  Blend until completely liquid, adding more stock until you get the needed consistency (FYI I put too many avocados in to start with in this photo, and had to take some out and add a lot more stock to get the right fluid consistency for the feeding tube).   Getting the "right" consistency was a matter of trial and error - blend the food, try running it through the pump, if it gets stuck blend it again and maybe add more stock, etc.

And here are the beet greens, all blended up, just because I think they are pretty:

This is chicken stock and quinoa (a traditional whole grain that is a more complete protein than most grains) in the best baby food/ice cube trays I've found.  They are the Green Sprouts Silicone Freezer Tray - they are flexible and hold exactly an ounce for each food cube, which was great as we were keeping track of what Oliver was eating.  (You can get them on Amazon.)

Yes, your kitchen will get messy in the process, but you won't have to do this for another month or so, and look at all the baby food you have now!

Freeze it all up, bag it, label it (I listed the date and ALL the ingredients so we could easily track all of his meals in case we needed to).

We did have a few times when the pump and tubes would get blocked, but it happened only rarely after the first few days of experimenting with how long each type of food needed to be processed.  We also continued to dilute the cubes of baby food with my milk since we were just supplementing his diet at the time.  My plan was to eventually give him 100% real food after he was "weaned" off milk (or when I absolutely couldn't stand pumping anymore), or at least mostly real food with formula supplementation if needed for some reason. 

This system worked great for us - if anyone stumbles upon this post and is trying to offer a loved one real food through a feeding tube, please know that I am not an expert by any means, but I would love to help if you have any basic questions about how we got it to work.