To start off with great news, Abby is now 19 lbs 5.5ozs and I'm pretty sure she is almost 30 inches!! We just ordered a new car seat - so thats a good sign :)
In the past few months we have continued to struggle with getting Abby to eat savory foods, drink anything other than water out of a drinking container, and her volume intolerance. For a while there Abby was testing us big time, she wouldn't open her mouth to accept the food, if she did accept it she would spit it out or start gagging, but finally after I'd say 4-6 weeks we aren't dealing with that anymore! She is still however coughing/gagging/choking her food once or several times during a feed - we simply ignore it, make sure she's not actually choking by watching her cues, then we continue on as if nothing happened. I'm still at a loss as to why she continues to do this, even with us completely ignoring it, she gains nothing by doing yet, yet she still does it. hmmm...
We have slowly increased Abby's food intake, both with her Carnation Instant Breakfast milk and with her solid foods - while I have backed up on breast feeding, now only doing it twice a day, and throughout the night (insert long sign and banging head on the desk). We literally increased one item at a time by 1/4 of an ounce for 3-5 days, then would increase another meal by 1/4 ounce - and now we are at 2 ounces of puree'd food 3 times a day, and 1.5 ounces of CIB milk 3 times a day. This still doesn't seem like much at all compared to other kids her age, but it's what her body needs and is thriving off of - she has been consistently gaining about 1 pound per month - this is AWESOME! Since I have backed off of the breastfeeding, it's a little tricky to make sure she is still hydrated since she cannot tolerate much additional volume - so we keep it slow and steady and offer her a sip here and there of water throughout the day. Wet diapers have been normal, so hooray!
In the past we were distracting Abby with a plethora of toys throughout the meal, but we have somehow moved on from that (yay!) and now she gets to watch a movie while she eats - currently she only wants to watch Nemo... over and over and over..just keep swimming! LOL She is actually eating her finger foods great - we start each meal with finger foods now instead of ending it with them, as we saw that she wasn't interested in them after she became full from her puree- but now she eats a good amount of finger foods and then all her puree so it's a lot more calories! Here is a picture of her from today of her eating spanish rice and kiwi! I think she does best with a savory food when it is in a finger food form - such as rice, lunch meat, cheese, etc - but once we puree something or give her a savory soup shes not such a happy camper.
We continue to have Allyne at our home 3 times a month, and we've been approved by our insurance for 18 more visits - Praise God!! We are so glad that we decided to go with Clinic 4 Kidz - the way that their system works is just what we needed! Even though they are only physically here 3 times a month (and all day long from Breakfast through dinner!), Allyne is available any time via text, phone, email etc - so it's really been great for us and she has helped us through a lot so far!
Here are some more pictures where you can see how good Abby is looking - she has a little belly and some cheeks now :) Thank you all for following our journey and your continued prayers!
We hope to get Abby to drink milk on her own one day soon - lots of work ahead!
Mama Bear
