Cassandre lives in France. She rediscovered hunger, joy, and confidence with the help of NoTube. Only one month after treatment start, she was tube-free. Today she eats with pleasure, and the family is happy.
Cassandre lives in France. Before tehy joined NoTube, eating was a daily struggle for Cassandre: force feeding, technology, and numbers dominated the family's everyday life. Everything changed with tube weaning at NoTube. For the first time, her parents felt taken seriously. As a result, they learned to trust Cassandre. Through weaning, she regained her appetite and was able to increase her oral intake again. She showed a lot of enthusiasm and joy in the process. She was weaned about a month after starting treatment. Today, Cassandre loves to eat.
Tell us about your experience with your child’s mealtime situation (with or without a feeding tube). What was it like before, during, and after treatment? How did you feel during the program? What was difficult; what was easy? What kind of changes did you notice in your child? Share what is important to you with other parents…:
Before the feeding tube was placed at the age of three months, my daughter Cassandre had problems in sucking. Bottle feeding took a long time, was incomplete, and often stressful. But she grew anyway.
Then, feeling pressured by the doctors, she was tube fed. After that, there was a real struggle. Suddenly, everything became technical and mechanical: we spoke about how much she should get in orally, kind of forced her to make sure she is fully tube fed. If she vomited, we tube-fed her again. Our whole life revolved around the feeding tube and tube feeding. We were told that the amount of tube feeding did not prevent her from feeling hungry. No one listened to us when we told the team in charge that it was too much volume and that she couldn't eat anything with that amount.
We were told that weaning would only be possible once she was consuming 80% of her food intake orally, even though we could see that our daughter was refusing every spoonful, every sip of water!
We had reached a point where she wasn't eating anything at all. In France, all they saw was her growth curve that wasn't going up. They talked about inserting a PEG feeding tube, even though there was nothing, absolutely nothing, preventing Cassandre from eating. They didn't see her desire or her abilities, nor did they see that she was a human being.
They treated her like a file card, and only the numbers on the scale mattered.The result were diagnostic appointments, invasive tests, and follow-up examinations that revolved solely around her weight.
Her quality of life and ours were completely irrelevant. We were in a critical situation and had little hope.
And then, we found NoTube when she was almost 8 months old. It was a different world. Here, we were told something I 
will never forget: “A child is not a vessel that you can fill at any will.”
For the first time, we learned to trust Cassandre. We reduced the tube feeding amounts and... suddenly, she got hungry. She ate in her own speed. Out of desire. Not because we forced her to.
Because we finally trusted her. It's no miracle. Of course, her intake fluctuated and sometimes seemed fragile. But it really happened, and the way we were treated was above all respectful.
Today, Cassandre tries everything and eats with pleasure. Every day, we learn more about how not to fall back into the vicious cycle of trying to reach certain quantities. We continue to follow the advice every day and try to have as few expectations as possible when it comes to eating. And we are making progress step by step with our baby, who has rediscovered her zest for life. NoTube saw my daughter where France only saw numbers. They saw a person, not a weight curve. A story, not a failure. And they showed us, her parents, that connection, trust, and freedom are worth more than following a nice, artificially generated weight curve. They saved our daughter and, in doing so, saved our family to a large extent. I cannot thank this team enough for their kind, non-judgmental attitude, their genuine listening, and for showing us that behind every difficult path there is a story, and behind every story there is a chance to rewrite the future.
Trusting NoTube was the best thing we have done so far!