It's been too long since I've updated you all on Abby...so here I go! We are happy to say as of her 18 month check up in December, Abby is now on the charts, the very edge of the charts but nonetheless she's on the chart people!! WHOO HOO! :)
Abby is currently almost 20 months and measures in at 30 inches tall and 20lbs 13ozs! It has been a little over 6 months with Clinic 4 Kidz and we are so blessed to be a part of their program!
We still have some struggle with food acceptance and occasional behavioral refusals but in the big scheme of things we are on a great path. Though Abby's preferred food lists are small we work very hard and precisely in getting in new foods as successfully as we can.
What does she eat you might wonder? Well for finger foods she accepts mexican rice, refried beans, cheese, quesadilla (sometimes), eggs, pancakes, mac n cheese (mashed), fries, cheetos, gold fish, and of course fruit! Allyne was here today for therapy and we got her to accept a revised version of fried rice! :) In her purees we can put variations of any of the following - strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, peaches, pears, bananas, applesauce, mangos, spinach, avocado, carrots & sweet potatoes. The veggies we have to sneak in with the fruits - and as you can see she doesn't accept too many veggies at this point. In all her puree's we add in 3/4 tsps of saffola oil, 1 tsp of heavy cream and 2 tsps of a grain.
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| Eating mashed spaghetti noodles with butter with Allyne |
We do 3 food feeds a day - each begin with a finger food requirement of 1 oz (most of this we feed to her as her self feeding is still not consistent (meaning if we leave it to her to eat, she 9 times out of 10 won't)), then she has the 2 ozs of puree with the additives in it - and we have 4 milk sessions a day - 3 sessions of 2ozs of milk (milk with carnation instant breakfast), and 1 session of 1 oz of milk - as nursing is coming to an end we will up her milk intake accordingly. Hydration wise, on top of the milk and water content/milk in her purees, she is drinking an additional 4-6 ounces a day of water/juice - this may not seem like much (which it really isn't), but it's a HUGE increase for her as she was doing only about 1 ounce a day just a few months ago!
We are happy to report that she has had NO throwing up episodes since October and she is OFF of the erythromycin for the delayed stomach emptying, and is off of the iron supplement as well! Right now she is only on prevacid for the reflux - she takes 2 15mg pills a day. We have had to increase this as she started to have a week of extreme food/milk refusal and Allyne suggested we check in with her GI as this is typical behavior when a childs reflux is acting up - and she was right, 3 days later Abby's refusals went away after increasing her meds!
What are things we are still working on?
- Increase different/new food acceptance
- Drinking her milk in a more age appropriate way - we currently spoon feed her milk along with a few sucks out of a straw though getting her to drink out of the straw takes a lifetime..ok maybe not that long but that's what it feels like!
- Self feeding
- Getting her to eat her calories through finger foods so we can phase out puree's eventually
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| Trying a new drinking contraption today for her milk with Allyne |
And there you have it! I will try my best to not wait 5 months for another update - man I am bad at this updating thing!
Thanks for reading!!
