Stop feeding the bed!

One of the worst things is going to check on your child that receives an overnight continuous feed, and realizing they either disconnected their extension or the medication port opened and you fed the bed instead of your child! You reach into the crib to feel your child soaking wet and frozen. Somehow, this always seems to happen on important weight days or lab work days just to make you freak out that it will affect those results.

I’ll never forget the first night it happened with Dylan. It was before he had started dialysis and his fluid intake was really important and calculated to keep his kidney hydrated. In the middle of the night, a few days after we had started overnight continuous feeds, he was still in the bassinet in our bedroom and I could hear him tossing and turning so I reached in to get him to try and comfort him. I realized very quickly something was wrong as he was soaking wet! Any medical mom who has had this happen can agree, this is a much different “soaking wet” than if your child pees or vomits everywhere. It’s a lot of volume and feels like your child has been laying in a bucket of water. Initially, I panicked as I had no idea what was happening, and then I felt awful that I should have checked sooner. I didn’t really know what to do afterwards. I didn’t know if I needed to try to re-give the volume that was lost or just carry on, which I found out later from the dieticians later in the day that I did not need to re-give. I paused the pump and cleaned everything up, then tried to warm up his frozen little legs. I remember sitting rocking with him and just worried the rest of the night about this happening again. I worried I dehydrated his kidney, which also was not the case.

I did some research, as I couldn’t sleep after that, and it became very clear to me that this was something that happens to everyone. I started to feel much better that it wasn’t just me! And that I hadn’t done anything wrong. After doing more research on ways to prevent this, I had another medical mom send me an Etsy link to a British Columbia seller that seemed to have found the solution to our problem. ThePricelessCA is run by another medical parent who has created products to allow some of our sanity back. Check out the Etsy shop here. I bought two of the locks for the Mic-key g-tube as Dylan quickly became a master at disconnecting his extension from his g-tube. I can honestly say, Dylan’s g-tube has not come disconnected again! This was a huge life saver and I would recommend his products to anyone having issues with feeding the bed. We have enough things to deal with as medical moms, and this doesn’t need to be one of them.

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