Eating

Natalie did well at swallowing therapy. She ate baby oatmeal with milk and pear puree in it. I'd been trying to get her to eat cereal with no success...now I realize she needs fruit in it to transition to eating it (I think Lukas did the same with his baby cereal). She's also gnawing on a biter biscuit and eating little puff things (sort of like a cheerio, but melts in her mouth very quickly). Ok, I just had to look up "gnaw". Is it "naw", "knaw", or "gnaw"? I put "naw" first, knew that wasn't right, then "knaw", knew that wasn't right, then "gnaw." But I looked it up first before posting. I guess I've said the word, but not written it very often!

It's looking like she could very soon eat all of her calories, but she needs to also be able to drink liquids, and she can't do that without the e-stim support. Next therapy, we'll try thickening milk with cereal to see if she can drink that safely without e-stim, so I can do it at home. We have to be careful to get enough liquid in her, because kids/people with her syndrome (RTS) are much more prone to constipation than the average person. Currently, we give her 3 ounces of prune juice every night before we go to bed, but the past two weeks, with the increased food by mouth, she's needed a little more help, so we have to be very careful to make sure her liquids are sufficient or she'd get backed up even more.

Irene, our friend from church, watches Lukas on Thursdays during Natalie's therapy, because it's during his naptime. Lukas loves playing with her, and has fun stories to tell me about everything he did with her. Tom and I are so blessed to have friends to help us out...we couldn't do it by ourselves.