Bite Me!

Amelia has been doing great recently with eating. We have not reduced her feedings through the tube, but she is growing taller and hungrier and has been increasing what she eats by mouth. She started going to a feeding therapy group with her speech pathologist. It is a group of 6 kids who each have their own therapist and they are in a room with food where they can touch it, explore it, paint with it, eat it with their fingers, with spoons or forks. The therapists are taking note on what things the kids eat and try mixing textures and introduce new flavors to them. I have noticed a positive effect on her since beginning the program.

Here she is eating a PB&J sandwich. Multiple layers, tastes, and textures, and she loves it!

She has been requesting to drink water out of a cup on a daily basis. She still chokes on it a little bit if it comes out too fast. Yesterday she ate several small broccoli florets with a spicy orange sauce out of my microwave lunch. She also ate a piece of beef out of it. She has also started gnawing on string cheese sticks. She likes lettuce and peas and cooked carrots. I have been successful feeding her Indian food, too. She also likes bread, cookies, and crackers --- especially any of these with peanut butter on them. She has almost gone through an entire box of peanut butter sandwich Girl Scout cookies all by herself! I pull them apart for her because eating through the entire cookie is too much for her. I was happy to have her entire diet consist of the sugary carbs in the past just to practice chewing and eating something, but now I am focused on her getting to eat a wider variety of healthier foods.

Today we went through the drive through at McDonald's and I ordered her a Fish Nugget Happy Meal. The coating on the fish had a spicy kick to it and she seem to really like it. She ended up eating 4 nuggets, an entire package of apples and half of the chocolate milk! She totally rejected the french fries which used to be have a 100% success rate when offered. As I see it, Amelia has all the tools necessary to be a successful eater. She has the willingness to try things, she has the mechanical ability to chew. The two final pieces of the puzzle are increasing volume and getting her to drink caloric beverages like milk or her Pediasure with some volume.

She is getting there one bit (and sip) at a time!