Lowering the salt and raising the formula.

Peter has done well with the resumed nighttime feed,s and so far has tolerated 20ml/hr, 25ml/hr, and is now at 30ml/hr.  We will be talking with the Boston team in another day about taking off one night of TPN. 

The sodium issue has been a bit consuming.  There is sodium in almost everything, as I said in the last post.  Foods that don't seem salty have surprisingly much salt in them.  We have found that almost every dry cereal has quite a bit.  There is a good cereal that has only 80 mg sodium though: Heart to Heart oat cereal in warm cinnamon flavor.  We have come across a few other good products lower in sodium.   I am settling for 100mg sodium per serving at the most, but less is much better, as his servings have been getting bigger as he is getting better at eating.  There is a type of Wheat Thin called "Hint of Salt" with only 55 mg sodium per serving.  Some good cookie choices have been California Lemon Cookies by Back to Nature and Barnum's Animal Crackers.  Peter really wants flavor, so the lemon cookies have been a great treat for him.  I thought ginger cookies would be super, but so far can't find any with low sodium content.  

We've been working on getting him to eat more non-processed foods as well.  He has been enjoying alphabet noodles (no added salt), which is a big step considering that regular noodles really put him off.  He has also been having fun trying different types of apples.  He ended up not liking the turnip, but did try it at least.  Homemade pancakes were only interesting for two days.  The difficulty with the non-processed foods is that it often takes him an hour to eat an ounce or two of them.  He can eat purees and cracker-types of foods much easier and more quickly.  Chris decided to make Peter some crackers yesterday, and Peter added garlic powder instead of salt, and Peter enjoyed them, so this may be another way to lower his salt intake.  Once we can start shaving off nights of TPN, that will also help reduce his sodium intake.