Sometimes I get frustrated. I want my little guy to get better, fast. I see his little pals from our NCT group moving from one or two cubes of babyfood, to chunks of mushed banana, to ham or cheese sandwiches, while my little one is still battling with me over a few spoonfuls of baby porridge.
I think: he should be moving on now. His oesophagus should be learning how to push down instead of up. He should be eating lumps, grabbing food and shoving it in his mouth, losing interest in breastfeeding. Beneath these thoughts is an image of those other babies, eating and growing, overtaking him, turning into toddlers while he stays behind.
And then the other day on Twitter I found this picture. It's a mockup of an oesophageal fistula and atresia repaired which has been beautifully - OK, grimly - recreated using pig bits. Thanks to surgeon @ffolliet for the tweet.
The tube on the right is the trachea, with stitches in it where the fistula has been removed (I think it's cut off at the bottom just because it's a mockup - surgeons please correct me if I'm wrong.) The tube on the left is the oesophagus. Look how incredibly tiny, how incredibly stretched that tube is. To be precise, as @ffolliet puts it, "The anastomosis is about 6 joined to 2mm."
And somehow, eventually my little boy will use that to swallow food. It's already expanded and grown with him, it will continue to grow. But it's hardly surprising that he's taking his sweet time. I've posted this picture here so I can look at it and remind myself how far he's come.
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