Monroe

hen you look at Monroe today, you wouldn’t know that she spent the first 15 days of her life at Seattle Children’s Hospital, and then spent the next five months with a nasogastric tube. When we left Children’s, we had no answers about our daughter’s condition; we just knew that she was unable to get enough nutrients by mouth, and that her feeding tube was essential for her growth and development.

We saw various providers who tried to help us figure out why Monroe wouldn’t take enough milk by mouth, and every answer was vague and inconclusive. It is very taxing to not know why your child cannot thrive in a typical way, and it can be an additional burden to have to take a brand-new baby out for numerous appointments and try and tube feed them in public. I was so grateful when we found Boyer and were told that they would come to our home to help us with our daughter.

Gay Burton has and continues to be an integral therapist in my daughter’s ability to become tube-free. What I appreciated the most is that she has a way of really understanding what the family needs in conjunction with the child’s developmental needs. Gay had to teach us how to be parents of a tube fed child, she helped me advocate for daughter, she pushed us when she thought that Monroe could do more, and she supported us through all the steps along the way. Most of all, I can tell that they genuinely care: it was clear when Gay joined us at the hospital for our swallow study, and when our FRC, Susan O’Leary, sent me tubie bags to keep Monroe from pulling her loose tube. Boyer has been a very important part of our success.

Today, Monroe is a thriving toddling one year old, and we are so grateful to Gay and Boyer for all the work we’ve done together over the last year!”

– Kaisha G. (Monroe’s mom)