Yesterday Connor had feeding therapy along with a visit from a Nutritionist from Special Medical Services in NH. They come to the house every other month. The feeding therapist shows me different oral motor therapy exercises to work on with Connor to help strengthen his jaw muscles. Our ultimate goal is to one day (hopefully in the near future) have him be able to swallow liquid that is not thickened. The Nutritionist comes and calculates how many calories Connor is getting and makes sure he is receieving the correct amount of all necessary vitamins. She also weighs him and checks his height to calculate his BMI and make sure that he is growing at a proper rate.
My little boy weighs 29.6 lbs. I remember the first few months when we were doing everything possible to help Connor get to 10 lbs. We were adding high calorie formula to pumped breast milk along with corn oil to fatten him up. And now he is just so big and has no problem gaining weight!
The feeding therapist first did some oral motor activities with Connor to wake up the muscles in his mouth. He blew into the harmonica type horn 25 times and was so proud of himself for each and every sound! He did some jaw strengthening with a bite block (this is a red stick that he bites down on each side of his mouth and then in the front.) He does fantastic with this one. She also massaged his cheeks and did some tongue lateralization activities with a nuk brush. Connor is currently only allowed liquids that are thickened to nectar consistency which means we have to add a gel thickener to all of his liquids. After doing the oral motor exercises we allowed Connor to try syrup consistency which is halfway between thin liquids and nectar consistency. He did great for the first 8-10 sips, but then as he started to drink a little faster he definitely aspirated on it as we heard him get very junky. That is sad, and we will not do another swallow study for at least 6 months because there is no reason to expose him to the x-ray radiation when we know that he will aspirate, but he is making amazing progress so we are very proud of him! We still hope that he will outgrow it someday and are doing everything we can to help him drink safely in the meantime.
Next, Connor was able to show off his self feeding skills eating blackberries out of a bowl with a fork and then got to enjoy his favorite snack...an oreo. Connor LOVES to eat and is so proud that he can now feed himself most of his meals.
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