Progress

Natalie's swallowing therapy went well. I stopped by the cafeteria and bought a carton of whole milk for her to try and she liked it! She drank it from the sippy cup with the valve backwards, but unthickened. She spilled a lot out of her mouth, but Sarah estimated she drank an ounce, and then ate about 2 ounces of food. Sarah also crumbled up a baby biscuit in her fruit to see how she would handle different textures. Natalie noticed it and didn't gag, but it will still take a long time to get her used to different textures. A good therapy session!

I try to look for the latest date on everything I buy and when I was at the cafeteria, I found one milk carton that was two days later than the others, so I bought that. It was only when we were cleaning up from the therapy session and I said we could use the rest of the carton on Wednesday (Sarah can store it in a fridge there), and I checked the date and realized the expiration date is Wednesday! So today the hospital cafeteria was selling milk cartons that expired today! I thought this would be a great way to get whole milk for Natalie's therapy (we drink 2% at home), since she can't drink liquids at home yet, but I don't drink milk that is that close to the date, and I certainly won't feed it to her! I hope she likes the taste of fresher milk the next time, because that's what she's going to get.

Here's a pic of her after therapy today...you can see the electrodes taped to her throat and the lead wires coming down. They plug into the e-stim device, which is battery operated and about about the size of a Blackberry. Removing the electrodes are the worst part of it. Sarah has to make sure they stay on through drooling and food dribbling, etc., so that means they can be hard to get off when Natalie's done. I recently discovered I can distract Natalie while Sarah is removing the electrodes and keep Natalie from crying. "Peekaboo" is the cure-all for Natalie...she loves it and will forget a lot of pain to watch you play peekaboo with her.