For breakfast Allyne pureed up a mango/peach puree with whole milk and the additives mentioned above. Abby ate 1oz with pretty much no fuss, which is great! She is working on getting Abby's wide mouth acceptance fixed and it does seem like Abby is understanding that when she says "big ahh" that means she needs to open up wide. The other issue we are having is that many times even though we get her to open wide, her lips shut so prematurely that we have to be lightening fast getting the spoon into her mouth or else she only gets a tiny bit of food off the spoon. Allyne is trying to teach Abby that if she does not open her mouth wide and keep it open for the bite that the spoon will remain stuck in her mouth until she opens up again to finish the bite (you will see some of this in the second video below). For each solid feed we first want to get the calories in with the puree, then we open it up for finger foods and allow abby to enjoy herself and eat what/how she wants (to an extent of course!). Today Abby tried plum for the first time and seemed to enjoy it! The other finger foods were Sara Lee's soft and smooth whole wheat bread, which she nibbled a bit at, and a strawberry (seems to be one of her favorites). Check out the video below of Abby enjoying her plum!
An hour after breakfast we do milk time. The milk is mixed with carnation instant breakfast vanilla powder. It is presented to her in a squeeze bottle since she will not suck it on her own yet (again, she will only suck water!). We gave her 10 minutes along with continuous songs of gigglebellies playing on the iPad and she got 1/2 an ounce down. She did spit some out, block the straw with her tongue and show other refusal behaviors but Allyne just kept on going!
For lunch we made a pear puree with the additives and Abby also seemed to enjoy this. The finger foods for lunch were a cheese quiche, half a potato like tater tot, laughing cow cheese and a strawberry. Abby put the quiche to her mouth, tasted it and spit it out, guess she didn't like it! She did play with it and taste it a few more times but kept spitting it out. She seems to like the potato and eats little pieces of the cheese here and there, and of course she loves her strawberry, though she mostly gnaws on it.
Her next milk time was coming up and Allyne decide that regardless of the 10 minute time limit that we wanted to go with, she said lets just aim to get 1 ounce in and if it takes longer it takes longer, she needs those calories! Every time Allyne presents the straw to Abby, if Abby does not voluntarily open her mouth Allyne says "drink" and Abby opens up, sometimes Allyne will have to wiggle the straw in as well. Abby seemed to be understanding more that she needs to do what Allyne is requiring of her and she did not fight nearly as much as she did yesterday, and guess what, we got 1 oz in in 8 minutes! Hooray!!! For now Allyne wants to only give Abby 1 oz and slowly increase it over the next 2-4 weeks to 2 ozs as we want to slowly stretch Abby's stomach! Abby also took 1 ounce at her last milk feed as well, awesome progress little girl!!
Dinner was a bit more of a challenge today as Allyne wanted to introduce a new food to Abby - vegetable pasta soup (pureed of course). She first started with her 1 ounce of preferred food, which was yogurt with the additives in it, after she finished the one ounce, she wanted Abby to take 1/4 oz of the veggie puree. See the video below for how that went... not so well with those veggies!! Sorry for the quick text transitions, I was in a hurry to get this posted so I didn't fix the time lapses!
As you can see from the beginning, Abby still is not all smiles when she knows its time to eat, but we are working hard to use toys and music, things she likes to get her to relax and enjoy herself. You can see that Abby is definitely doing better at opening her mouth big and wide, but we still need work on the premature lip closure and tongue thrusting. But she has had great progress in just 2 days!! The veggie soup did not go nearly as smoothly, but it was good to see how Allyne reacted and did not back down. I'm soaking all of this in because she is only here 3 more days then I will be responsible for replicating exactly what she does! And from here on out (until she is 100% better) anyone who feeds her MUST be trained by Allyne or Dr. Patel - we're on strict protocol here folks! :)
Here are some tips I learned from today:
- More word commands. "When empty, you're all done" say this while showing the child the bowl/cup of food. When they finish show them the empty container and say "Empty, all done!" and praise them.
- When the child refuses or shows behaviors against eating, just completely ignore them. Don't say "you're ok" or "just take a bite" or "you can do it" - you don't say anything but "open, ahh" or "big, ahh" and you keep the spoon at their mouth until they do so. The point of not acknowledging the behavior is you want the child to learn that it doesn't phase you no matter what they do, they still need to do what is required of them.
- We do want to keep the atmosphere positive, so if the child shows signs of being anxious, or antsy, or just being over it, then nonchalantly empty some of the contents out of the bowl/cup and have them finish one last bite and then show them "empty, all done!" - that way they begin to associate that once it's empty they are all done.
Tomorrow Allyne will begin to train me on giving the milk to Abby and I will do the last milk feed by myself. On Thursday she will begin to train me on feeding her!!
During the past few days Allyne and Dr. Patel have made new food lists of stuff that we needed to pick up at the grocery store, and it's been a bit hard for me to go since they are here 8am-7pm, then Abby's bath is at 7:30, so my mom has been a huge help in picking up all the items we needed! Thanks Mom!! Allyne was super excited that after giving us the list yesterday we already had everything she wanted - she says some parents aren't able to get what they need until the last day! Nice to have a mom who is right around the corner from us and who works right next to whole foods and trader joes!!! :D (and who brings you a Starbucks with all the groceries...teheeee!)
That's all for now, until tomorrow!
Mama Bear
No comments:
Post a Comment