Days 12-13

Another week over at the clinic.

Sarah is doing well.  Thursday, Sarah was thrown for a bit of a loop because her second feeding therapist was out sick.  Her main feeding therapist was there, though.  It, unfortunately, meant that her main feeding therapist wasn't at the steering meeting because it was during breakfast and she had to feed Sarah.  I did find out that Sarah had 100% acceptance at breakfast, and that was just after the meal where the new protocol had been introduced.  Obviously, she's gotten the point very quickly.

The meeting went very well.  We conference called Daddy in, so he could be aware of what is going on and understand their methods.  They did have some of Sarah's history incorrect, so we straightened it out.  I suppose it honestly isn't a huge deal, but they had mistakenly thought that Sarah had eaten table food normally up until age two.  We explained to them that, no, she didn't.  Not really, anyway.  She began baby food normally and without an issue, but was never really able to eat table food.  She's never eaten a Cheerio or other beginning table food.  She did go through a phase just after her second birthday where she began to start chewing some food - canned pasta with meat (Chef Boyardee).  It was short-lived, and when she got a long string of ear infections, the poor kid lose that ability and never got it back, even after getting ear tubes.  Anyway, each of the disciplines went over what they're teaching Sarah and how it will work together to eventually get Sarah to eat age-appropriate textures.  The nutritionist said that Sarah accepts a wonderful variety of foods (in pureed form, of course), and is getting enough calories and nutrients.  Her case manager explained that we can't move too quickly with textures because Sarah doesn't understand the concept of chewing food yet.  She doesn't know how to move the food around her mouth and chew it.  If we got her to accept a new texture right now, she'd likely just mash it in her mouth and swallow it real quick.  That's not the right way to eat and it could pose a choking hazard.  So, her feeding therapists will work closely with speech and OT to determine when she is ready to try some higher textures to make sure she understands how to do it safely and correctly.

So, back to her meals.  Her main feeding therapist had a follow-up patient to work with shortly after Sarah's meal, so she had another therapist feed her, just in case the meal took long.  She watched from the observation room with me and only came in when a blocker was needed.  Sarah refused ONE bite of food.  She was likely testing the other therapist.  She figured out she wasn't getting away with anything from her either, so she accepted the rest of the bites.

At dinner, they tried a new food, pizza (in pureed form, I think they add extra sauce or something to bring it down).  Sarah made some weird faces, but she accepted all of her bites.  Her therapists were very pleased that she responded so quickly to the new protocol and has learned who is the boss.

On Friday, Sarah was happy to see her second feeding therapist back.  She was watching an Elmo video during her meal, and when Elmo sang "that's Elmo's world," she sang "that's Miss B's world." (name withheld for privacy reasons)  I guess Sarah missed her.  She did very well and didn't throw any food.  She did great for lunch and dinner as well.  She had the pureed pizza again for lunch, and made less faces this time.  For dinner, she got a new food, pureed cheeseburger.  It didn't look as scary as I was expecting.  She made some really interesting faces, but never threw it at all.  I was really pleased with her.

Her main therapist will be out on Monday, so I'm sure Sarah will be at least a bit upset about it.  Maybe she (D) will get a cool Sarah song on Tuesday.

I believe they are kicking the textures up a notch early next week, although I don't know exactly when.

In blog news, I have finally taken the time to adjust a few things here.  I enabled the mobile setting so people looking at this on a phone can read it more easily.  I am probably going to tweak a few more settings as well this weekend.  I also set up the blog so I can e-mail my posts.  Hopefully this means I'll be able to update from KKI afterall.