About Dad

First off, let me point out that I'm not a doctor. I hope nobody reads this and thinks, "Aha! This stranger on the Internet seems to know what he's talking about! Who needs to see an actual doctor?"

This isn't to say that I'm completely unqualified, just uncredentialed. My previous job I worked for a company making an ultrasound prostate scanner. I got to see the practice of medicine up close. I discovered, among other things, that medicine generally is not rocket science. Other than neurochemistry maybe, there's really not a lot that a reasonably intelligent person can't sort out by reading and thinking about it.

I spent a lot of time in urologists' offices. Patients at urology clinics tend to be old men in poor shape. It occurred to me that, even though I was old and felt bulletproof, at some point I was going to be old myself, and I needed to make sure I held up better than some of those guys.

At that point, I was a fairly typical Gen X American male. I smoked, I exercised as little as possible and my diet consisted of an alarming amount of Taco Bell. I had tried dieting with some modicum of success but it rarely lasted.

So I quit smoking and unlike the dozens of other times, managed to stay quit. That was the easy part. There are 1000 ways to quit smoking, but they all come down to one thing: don't smoke any more.

The losing weight and getting in shape was the tricky part. I'd tried counting calories in the past, but that was miserable, brain-taxing work that ultimately didn't work very well. I'd had some luck with a low-carb program, but that also involved more math than I wanted to have to do.

So I did some research, reading books and some blogs. Borrowing heavily from the work of other people, I devised a diet which was simple and while it required some willpower, was very easy to follow. There were no points, I didn't spend much time counting calories or carbs. Very little counting, just making careful choices about the things I eat. I even started exercising, about 45 minutes a week.

At last count, I lost over 50 lbs. It's been off for two years. While I still don't get to eat anything I want, it's staying off.

So I've spent a lot of time thinking about weight, fat, muscle, willpower, addiction, and how it all comes together. I'm not saying I solved the problem of being overweight for everyone, but I solved it for myself.

What I hadn't thought about was how the problem of being overweight is simply the opposite of the problem of gaining weight, that maybe I had something I could contribute to helping Gus put on weight.

Then one afternoon, Sherry (Gus's mom) was talking about how obsessive she was getting about the number of calories Gus gets, and how it was stressing her out. I realized I managed to lose a ton of weight without once worrying about the number of calories I was eating. So maybe, if there's an easier, more effective way of putting on weight.

About Gus

Gus was born 14 months ago with a very rare birth defect called esophageal atresia; about 1 out of 4000 babies have it. Basically, when you have this condition, there's a break in the esophagus, and the upper and lower portions end in blind pouches. Wikipedia has a good rundown here

Shortly after Gus was born, they put a feeding tube in and took a series of images to assess what they had to do to fix him.
Most of the time, the lower end fuses to the trachea, but stays pretty close to the upper end. In this case it can be treated with surgery when the baby is a few weeks old. In more rare instances, the lower end doesn't fuse to anything so you have a gap between the two ends. That's the kind Gus had. To make matters worse, the gap was fairly substantial.

The alternatives when you have a defect like this range from bad to worse to awful. Fortunately, Gus's surgeon, the great Dr. Coln, performed a very tricky procedure to speed up the time it would take to force the two ends to grow together. Once they were close enough, after about two months in the hospital, he was able to attach the ends, thus giving Gus a clear path to swallow food, once everything healed up. In the meantime, he was eating through his feeding tube, which was swapped out for a button at some point.

Things were going pretty well and everything was moving in the right direction until Gus got an infection in his IV. It wasn't a super serious infection, but it wasn't one you want to mess around with either. They dropped the antibiotic equivalent of an H-bomb on the infection and it went away after a few days. But because of this, his whole digestive system went haywire. He became super-sensitive and anything but the most expensive hypoallergenic formula would come rushing out the back-side almost immediately.

Gus's mom, the diligent and dedicated Sherry, had been pumping breast milk this whole time. If you didn't know, pumping exclusively is a brutal procedure and she went the extra mile, literally pumping out gallons of breast milk for Gus. But after the infection, he wasn't able to tolerate any of it and we had to donate it. Sherry still doesn't want to talk about it.

But once we got Gus infection-free and able to take some food orally, we were free to go. It was over three grueling months, but we're still fortunate we had the team we did.

Since then, Gus has progressed marvelously. We basically stopped using the feeding button within a few months of him being home, sticking with bottle feeding of the aforementioned ridiculously expensive formula, premixed Alimentum, if you're curious. At some point his stomach was able to handle formula that was merely "pricey", and everyone celebrated.

And, right about on schedule, Gus showed an interest in eating adult food.
There's always a concern with babies who do any sort of tube feeding that they'll develop weird food issues, pickiness, aversions, etc. Gus doesn't seem to have any of those.
We have to be choosy to make sure it was soft enough that it wouldn't get trapped in his throat right at the connection point, but he'll eat a wide variety of foods.

Like I said, we're very fortunate. Despite his condition, despite all the surgeries (and there were plenty), he's basically a normal 14 month old. He's strong, bright healthy, and incredibly active. Actually, "active" doesn't come close to describing Gus. He's like the Tasmanian Devil, and just as destructive to furniture.

There are two problems: one is reflux. Gus is no stranger to throwing up and does so about five times a week, give or take. Lots of babies have reflux and most outgrow it. But given Gus's defect and subsequent reattachment he might never recover from it. He's on Prevacid for that, which seems to help. At least, he starts throwing up if we stop giving it to him. (That's another story.)

The most intractable problem, the one that inspired this here blog, is that he's underweight. This is not to say that he isn't growing. He is. All the time. He's just below the range they want babies to be at.

We'll have plenty more to say about that.

About This Blog

I'm a dad with a baby named Gus, who was born with a birth defect, esophageal atresia. It was corrected surgically and we were sent home after spending three excruciating months in the hospital. Gus is now over a year old and aside for some minor issues related to his defect, he's perfectly healthy. The problem is that he's underweight.

This blog is my attempt to find a way for Gus to put on weight. As it happens, I have some experience with weight loss, having lost about 50 lbs over the course of a year and kept it off for the last two years. My diet plan was somewhat unconventional, but that's because the conventional thinking on losing weight is mostly nonsense.

It occurred to me that Gus is basically on the reverse of a conventional weight loss program. Since most weight loss programs don't work for losing weight, I doubt they're going to be any more effective for gaining weight if you do the opposite. I think there's a better way of doing things. That's what I'm trying to find out.