Jacob, age 3
Why TubieTable exists
I built the tool I couldn't find.
Jacob was born extremely early with intrauterine growth restriction, and spent his first months in the NICU on IV nutrition while his digestive system struggled to catch up. Two bouts of pneumonia, heavy respiratory support, and two corrective surgeries followed before we ever brought him home — and he came home tube-fed.
Since then, feeding him has been a years-long process of trial, error, and paying close attention to what his body was actually telling us.
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Breast milk, for as long as possible
From the start, I was wary of formula being treated as the only real option for tube-fed kids. I pumped and fed Jacob breast milk through his tube for as long as my supply held out.
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The switch to commercially processed pouched feeds
When my milk supply started to run low, Jacob's care team and I decided to transition to a formulated blended feed — a commercially processed, shelf-stable pouched food supplied through a DME and specialty pharmacy. Even after insurance, it was costing us well over $800 a month. We are still paying off those medical bills today.
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We couldn't afford to keep going
The cost became unsustainable. I knew I had to figure out home blending — so I dug into everything I could learn and took the scary step of making his feeds myself. His dietitian oversaw his nutrition through the transition, but calculating recipes and hitting his calorie targets every day was exhausting and labor-intensive.
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AI changed everything
I started using AI to help me build and calculate his recipes, and found it incredibly useful. The change was almost immediate: vomiting dropped from five times a day to once or twice a week. His speech and cognitive development took off. And that's when the idea hit me.
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Building TubieTable
If AI could do this for Jacob, it could do it for every family on a home blend journey. I built TubieTable so other tubie parents wouldn't have to spend years stumbling through the same trial and error I did — they could just get a recipe that works.
