How does a G tube work?

A few people have asked me how the feeding tube works. How is it different from feeding a baby orally? Is it scary? Is it hard to do?  Well it was a lot of steps to learn, very important steps that we cannot forget. But truthfully, once you operate a feeding tube a few times, it becomes second nature. Ill show you what exactly a G tube is and a feeding pump. There are many different types of feeding tubes (NG, NJ, GJ, J, G, ETC) and different types of pumps (kangaroo, infinity, etc). Chloe has a Mic-key G tube with an infinity teal pump. She is on continuous feeds and not gravity feeds.

So as you can see in the diagram, the balloon is inside of the stomach. The balloon is inflated with about 5 mls of water and that keeps the g tube in place. The tube goes from inside the stomach to the outside. On the outside of the tummy, you can see the button and her tube which connects to the button. 

The button consists of the balloon inflation valve, the feeding port and the feeding port cover as shown above. 

Here you can see Chloe's button with her tube attached and her being happily fed. Not scary 😊

  That's the anatomy portion of a G tube. How the feeding pump works is where it gets a bit trickier. I'm going to add another helpful diagram.

  

The pump! We pour 4 hours worth of formula into the feeding bag shown above. The pump has a rate that works best for Chloe. Right now her rate is 41 mls per hr. The pump beeps when we are out of milk so we don't have to worry about her accidentally getting a bunch of air into her tummy which would be very very uncomfortable.  After we pour the milk into the bag we have to prime the milk all the way through the tubing before connecting it to her. All we have to do is press and hold a button on the pump that says "Prime".  Then we attach the tubing to Chloe's extension and push the extension into Chloe's button. Now Chloe is ready to be fed. 

  Tube feeding is a lot of extra work with a lot of little steps but it is necessary at times. There are plenty of reasons why someone may need to be tube fed . Chloe needed the feeding tube because she had severe reflux and with her heart condition it was actually deadly because she would aspirate on her reflux and turn blue. She had a Nissin funduplication surgery to fix the reflux along with the G tube.  Now Chloe doesn't have reflux but we are going to be working on getting her used to eating orally since it isn't natural to her. The feeding tube may look intimidating at first but it's really not. The tube doesn't give Chloe any limitations. I think she thinks it's a toy actually. 

Chloe pulls on it, bites it, rolls around, kicks, etc just like any other baby and no problems. If you have anymore questions about Chloe's feeding situation feel free to ask!