Natalie's swallowing therapy has been going really well since we started sweetening her milk during therapy. Today I made a sugar syrup to add to the skim milk and she drank it quite readily. Lukas had a blast swinging on the therapy swings in the little gym and jumping in the ball pit while Natalie chugged her sweet milk (she drinks whole milk at home with no problem, but in therapy she doesn't want to drink).
Sarah, Natalie's therapist, is checking to confirm that we have an insurance authorization for another swallow study, and then she'll schedule Natalie for a final swallow study in September. And then we're done! We've decided that it's time to end the therapy...we pray that she is safe on thin liquids, but if she isn't, we'll thicken her liquids for a while and then wait to do another swallow study again in 6 months or a year to see when we have to stop thickening liquids.
When this therapy is over, we'll try to start scheduling speech therapy...I just can't take any more therapy than what we're doing right now!
Natalie started swallowing therapy in September of last year. If I'd known that it would take a year of three-times-a-week trips, then twice-a-week trips, I probably would have chickened out. But I am so glad we didn't know the future and how long it would take, because she is eating almost everything that is appropriate for her chronological age, before she's 2 years old. Without this therapy, she would most likely still be 100% tube fed, and we'd be trying to start her on baby purees when she's 3 or 4 years old.
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