Guilt

Last Thursday was Ivy's post-procedure check-up, after two weeks on pureed food. We had a good discussion with the surgeon to ask what next steps were. He said to keep giving her chicken, just cut it up smaller. And when she got something stuck, even if she is able to bring it back up herself, he wanted to know about it; as he would likely dilate again, even though he thinks biggest reason things are getting stuck is the lack of mobility at the surgery site.

I've been struggling with some pretty heavy guilt today. When I picked Ivy up from daycare, I got a report that something (likely lunch meat) had gotten stuck in her esophagus at lunch, and while water was getting down at the end of the day, purees weren't. I confirmed it at dinner - some purees were getting down, and plenty of water too (thank goodness she wasn't being obstinate and spitting everything else), but that was it.

So the current plan is to monitor her through the night and into the morning, and call the surgeon in the morning if things don't get better. She has had lunch meat stuck before, many months ago, and it ended up coming up the next morning without me even knowing it was stuck, since breast milk was getting past it, so I'm hoping this is a similar situation. I was able to get her to chug some "milkshake" (Pediasure) earlier, and I'm hoping it forced the food down. In the meantime, she's in a happy mood, and is singing and playing and being generally happy and normal.

But boy, this guilt. Is this happening because I'm not cutting her food small enough, even after two trips to the surgeon? I'm definitely less conservative than Cory is, in terms of bite sizes, because almost everything goes down just fine... until it doesn't. Is it something we just have to live with, and nothing we do will keep it from happening? I have no idea what the norm is, because there's such a range of severity with EA/TEF kids and most of the moms in the Facebook support group (the ones that post, anyway) have kids with g-tubes and oral aversions. I just keep coming back to how I should be more careful, and cut everything so much smaller than I think I should. I don't know. I just know that it feels a lot like my fault, whether or not it is.