Welcome!

My hope is that there will be some resources here for families with special needs. Instead of reinventing the wheel, I have included resources that point to other resources. The posts here are simply reporting some of the things we have tried to make our daughter's experience more comfortable and productive. Please add any experience you have to help us and others help our children.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Kangaroo Joey

We tried using a new feeding pump, the Kangaroo Joey, for a month. It certainly has some nice features and I like its user interface and options. It alarms when the feeding is done and the alarm's volume is adjustable. It seems to have more accurate measurements marked on the feed bags than the Zevex Infinity system. It has multiple advantages, but it was not a good fit for us.
We use Elecare formula and it is a powder that has to be mixed. Apparently, powder formulas do not operate well in the Kangaroo system because it has a back-flow prevention valve that is pretty sensitive. The company who makes the Kangaroo stated we would have to blend the formula if we did not want there to be any problems. We noticed however, the post that turns the back-flow prevention valve on the feed set would get out of alignment and make it difficult to insert the set into the machine. We would notice this mainly when the tab on the set would not be centered in its corresponding hole on the pump door. The tab would actually be resting against the outer edge of that hole and would push back once the pump started. Then this would pop the door open and the pump would fail to function. We traded the pump out twice and never could figure out why this kept happening. Our best guess is that something was not quite right with the feed sets.
There are a lot of features we like about this system, but we did not find it to be reliable. We also noticed that the volume it dispensed was inaccurate. It would indicate it had delivered 250 ml of formula but we could tell less had been given. We actually measure our formula with a scale to ensure the volumes are correct. What we mixed and what the pump gave often varied by quite a bit. So, we have gone back to the Zevex pump and are dealing with the issues it presents. But it seems to be more accurate and is not as sensitive to mixed formula.