Sundays in the Hall household over the past number of months have followed a similar pattern. Getting ready to go to church – getting everyone ready, making sure Josiah was fed in enough time so that he wouldn’t throw up – but late enough that we didn’t have to creep out of the service early to feed him again (we generally feed him every three hours so that he can get enough calories throughout the day.

However most Sundays the pattern is this – it is just time for everyone to get in the car and either as soon as we place Josiah in his car seat or a block away from the house the whole of his previous feed is deposited over Shari/Myself/Himself/the back of the car – not a pleasant experience.

And this is simply a microcosm of what a typical day is like – trying to get enough calories in our preemie so that he continues to grow while at the same time he continues to refuse feeding by mouth and also continues to spit up much of what he has eaten.

Much of this behaviour for Josiah is learnt – from the earliest days as a baby under two pounds he was intubated with a breathing tube and thereafter much of his oral activity has been a negative experience – is it any wonder that he now has an oral aversion.

Which is why we today travelled from Kansas City to San Francisco to a place called the Los Altos Feeding Clinic to get Josiah off the feeding tube and feeding on solid foods.

The journey was really good – a three hour flight to San Francisco with lots of baby gear went without a hitch – the staff at Midwest Airlines and Alamo Car Rental were very generous with us

Tomorrow the feeding begins….