Feeding Therapy - Week 3

August 8, 2007

Today officially ended Little Man's third week of feeding therapy at Texas Children's. He's doing well with it. We're hoping that by this time next week he will be completely off of baby food. Everything he eats from this point on must be pureed. There is seriously an art to getting food properly pureed, and it's not terribly easy. However, his ST (speech therapist) has given us lots of great ideas on foods to start with and how to prepare them.

Basically, the idea at this point is to discourage the sucking that he does on food (instead of chewing it) while continuing exercises that encourage the chewing. Those exercises are NOT easy. I have to "anchor" a specific food in a specific manner and location in his mouth that encourages the chewing. It looks easy -- but I got my first shot at it today along with the other oral-motor exercises -- and it's just not so easy in practice. But...practice makes perfect (or so I've been told.)

Once Little Man is accepting the puree's we can drop down to once a week if we like until the chewing is more consistent. We can do the exercises at home with him and I'd like to make sure we have enough visits left (gotta love insurance) for the year for after he's chewing. Once he is chewing more (yes there is a very specific expectation) then we'll start back at twice a week to get him eating real food!

I told the ST yesterday, "My goal would be that just maybe he could eat a piece of cake on his birthday." She told me that she hears that goal a lot with the kids she works with. He's going to be TWO in only about eight weeks so I'm hopeful, but being sure not to set myself up for disappointment either. The ST didn't seem to think it was a completely unrealistic goal but we've got a long way to go to get there.

So that's basically what's going on with his feeding for now. Things have just been crazy busy around here lately.

I'd also like to say congrats to Hubby's younger brother & his wife on the birth of their first child. They had a daughter born on Aug 3. She was a healthy 7 lbs 12 ozs and 19" long. We're hoping they get internet soon so we can see more pictures since we all know just how quickly they can change!