Tube-fed toddler to try Austrian programme
GEORGINA STYLIANOU
STACY SQUIRES/Fairfax NZ
SEEKING HELP: Christchurch toddler Inara Herdman and her family will fly to Austria next month to attend a tube-weaning programme. Parents Ryan Herdman and Bonnie Lintott want to help other tube-dependent babies access the treatment.
Christchurch toddler Inara Herdman may eat without the help of a tube for the first time in her life if a European feeding programme proves a success.
Inara, 2, spent the first 62 days of her life in the neonatal intensive care unit at Christchurch Hospital fighting for her life.
Born with a severe hernia, she also suffers from acid reflux, dairy intolerance, scoliosis of the spine and?pulmonary hypertension, and?she has only one functioning lung.
She can?be fed only through a tube, which she pulls with her.
Inara, her parents, sisters and brother will fly to Graz in Austria next month to attend a three-week feeding programme.
The tube-weaning programme has a 96 per cent success rate since its launch 15 years ago.
It lets children experiment with food in a controlled environment and reduces the amount of calories a child consumes so they experience hunger for the first time.
Inara's mother, Bonnie Lintott, said the family had raised about $55,000, which covered the cost of flights, stopovers, oxygen tanks and the feeding programme, and hoped to raise a further $10,000.
"We're all a bit nervous about going over,?but there's no other option really. I don't want my child to be hooked up to a machine to eat for the rest of her life.''
She?said Inara "can't carry on the way she is" because she was not growing properly.
"Once a baby is tube-dependent, their body struggles to learn how to eat, and even if they want to swallow food, they can't because their body rejects it."
Inara was eating goat's milk formula intended for lactose-intolerant babies, not "active toddlers".
Lintott said the Australian Government started paying for families to receive treatment in Graz in 2007 and the New Zealand Government needed to do the same.
She had been in contact with five other New Zealand families who had to fundraise to get to Graz and others who had remortgaged their homes.
People can donate to the Inara Herdman Appeal Fund using bank account number 03 0674 0449488 00.
For more information, see Inara's Facebook page, "Inara Herdman - I Deserve to Eat".
- ? Fairfax NZ News
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Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/8148764/Chch-toddlers-bid-for-normal-life
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