How we added PediaSure© to his diet

Personally, I think PediaSure gets a really bad rap. You see the parent shamers out there who will comment so negatively when someone mentions their child uses PediaSure to supplement their diet. Common negative responses: "Have you seen the sugar content in those?"

or "They are getting full on meal shakes and you're not letting them be hungry enough for real food."

or "There are too many chemicals in those shakes to give them to my child."

While those arguments are all fine, well and good if you have other options at your disposal to give your child the nutrition that they need, for some of us this is our only option to give them any source of vitamins or calcium. I am beyond grateful that we live in a day and age that gives us this option to help our children. We introduced PediaSure in our house after Alex was hospitalized the first time. He had gotten sick with the stomach flu and after 3 days, his body just wasn't able to recover. We ended up with him in the hospital unresponsive. Watching your child not come to like that is the hardest thing a parent can ever witness. For him, the nutrition he was getting from his current diet wasn't enough to support him through an illness. He didn't have anything saved up to allow him to bounce back.

Day 1 of our first hospitalization back in January 2017

Something had to change.

Let me tell you, it is difficult to introduce something new when you have someone who is so unwilling to try new foods or drinks out of pure fear. The process of getting him to drink it on his own took a good 6 months. That is no exaggeration. I started by getting a pocket size weekly planner. The planner was to be used as a food diary and to keep track of his follow up appointments. I purchased a medicine syringe and a timer. The timer was set for every 30 minutes. We treated those first 6 months like the PediaSure was medicine. Timer would go off and it was time for his next "dose." We started with 10ml every 30 minutes, followed by 20ml, then 30ml as he grew more comfortable with it and we were able to do two full PediaSure bottles a day. After 6 months of religiously setting timers and tracking his intake, he finally got to the point where we could give it to him in a cup to drink on his own. Now it's the first thing he asks for when he wakes up in the morning and the only source of any good nutrition he is able to ingest. Would I love it if he didn't need the supplements to survive? Would I love it if he could eat a real strawberry or drink an actual glass of milk? Yes, yes and yes. Our reality is that I can't see a time anywhere in our near future where he won't need it. One of his doctors recently recommended that we double him up to 4 PediaSures per day instead of the manufacturer's recommended 2. PediaSure is not a cheap thing to buy either. For parents who only use it for the recommended 8 weeks to help fill the gaps in a child with a relatively normal diet, it can be an expensive 8 weeks. 8 weeks at 2 per day can cost a family about $210. Imagine being on that indefinetely and not just for the recommened 8 weeks. For us, doing 4 per day now, we spend on average about $55 a week or over $2,800 a year. Going back to the naysayers who think I need to find a better alternative, if I could I would. While that expense is a non-negotiable line on our grocery budget, we have been given options to file for assistance through Abbott, the manufacturer of PediaSure and are in that process now. We also have taken advantage of some savings offered with printable coupons on their website that you can find if you click here. Every once in a while I'll get lucky with an offer through Ibotta for some extra money back or they'll have a coupon in the Sunday ad paper. I always feel like I hit the jackpot with those and hit up everyone I know who gets a paper to snag their coupons when the rarities appear.

For a mom on a budget, where there's a will there's a way and for my Alex, I'll always find a way.

This is not an advertisement for PediaSure. This is just one mom's experience adding in a much needed nutritional supplement to their child's diet.