A Long Way To Go To Kink a Tube

On Christmas Day I caught up with a friend who told me he was off on a camping trip to a place we'd stumbled across years ago. There and then we decided we would tag along. Chris spent two days hastily kitting out enough of our van, which was mid-conversion, to make it liveable for a few days in the middle of nowhere.

A few days later, the van was packed to the brim with toys. Standup paddle boards, climbing shoes, chalk, mountain bikes, helmets, swimmers, towels...we were ready for adventure. We packed Frankie into the car and the dog, well...he had already packed himself and had been laying in the van for about 3 days having sensed we might be headed bush.

We drove for 3 hours before we hit the dirt road which we continued down for yet another hour. The potholes threw us around, the mattress and bikes came close to landing on the dog and Frankie laughed and laughed with every bump we hit. She had been incredible on our drive. Things were off to a cracking start.

We arrived to find our friends set up with their toddler playing happily and immediately the pace of life slowed and my shoulders relaxed. I watched Nuptse run through the clear, cool water of the river, sprinting between rocks, swimming and zooming and my heart swelled...this is why we had brought him. Because his happiness is my happiness. I then watched Chris ride his mountain bike along the dirt road with Frankie in her little seat up the front. Nuptse ran along beside them, swerving between trees. Again...my heart grew. This was how I wanted my baby to grow up. Outside. Surrounded by wonderful friends.

The kids played as beers were consumed around the fire. We were in for a wonderful few days.

5 hours later, Frankie's feeding pump started beeping. We knew what it meant. The tube was kinked inside her.

And from there...the joyful bubble I was enjoying smashed into a thousand pieces. After an unsuccessful attempt to unkink the tube, and it coming out her mouth, we yanked out and the decision was made to head home. While we had a nasogastric tube with us, the risk that she might vomit continuously meant we really needed to be near a hospital. And so the decision was made, at 7:30pm, to drive the 4 hours home. We packed up our entire setup in about 10 minutes flat, loaded everyone into the van and headed back up the bumpy dirt road with a baby who had just had the trauma of a kinked TPT yanked up her throat, out her mouth, then out her nose. This kid and her resilience never ceases to amaze me.

We arrived home about midnight and by 1am were laying an exhausted baby on the living room floor to insert a nasogastric tube. As if she hadn't already been through enough. I had been dreading this day. Frankie hadn't been fed consistently into her stomach for 5 months. And the reason we had stopped all those months ago was because she was failing to put on weight due to vomiting most of her feed up every, single day. I was a nervous wreck.

We got a distraught Frankie to sleep at 2am and by 4am she was awake again. She gagged on and off for those couple of hours and the knot in my stomach drew every time. The next day was horrific. At 6pm we pushed the ng tube in further in a last ditch effort to stop the gagging, get some food into her, and avoid the hospital and an inevitable drip. She cried and cried and refused to sleep and cried some more. But...she drank. She was dehydrated. She knew it. And she drank. With her mouth! 90ml of water. The kid who hadn't had more than 5ml a day in 6 months DRANK!

And, for a few hours the day before, I got to watch my baby and my dog run wild in the bush, while surrounded by incredible people. Even if it was a little short lived, I was calling it a successful trip. By our standards anyway!