A Bunch of Babble

Owen has just discovered that he can babble!

Now if we can just get him to eat! Owen had his feeding study today. It was a few hours of sitting in an examination room (the kind you see on tv where people sit behind the one way mirror) while talking to a variety of professionals and playing with Owen. Of course... he LOVED this scenario...a bunch of people giving ALL their attention to him as he showed off his big toothy smiles and had a mouthful of babblings to say. Speaking of teeth...Owen is cutting his two top teeth!!

The Conclusion of the study.. Owen won't eat. He will shove any other object in his mouth, but NO food or liquid. The resolution to the issue is to up his therapy schedule. He not only gets physcial therapy once a week, but occupational therapy will start coming to the house as well. The occupational therapist will also work on the sensory issues involved with feeding. On top of this, we will work with a speech therapist weekly from Phoenix Childrens on getting him either to suck more profciently on the bottle, or even just bypass bottles all together and go straight to solids and sippy cups.

His biggest issue is his suck. A baby's tongue should curl as he sucks and so the therapist had me stick my finger in the middle of his tongue and apply resistence to see if he would curl it -- that lasted half a second until he about bit my finger off. Note to self... Owen has a STRONG bite and his teeth are sharp, don't stick your finger in his mouth! There's not much we can do if he doens't want to eat. The goal is to make eating a pleasurable experience and to get him familiar with objects, textures and flavors in and around his mouth. I have a feeling this isn't going to be an easy road ahead. Then again, maybe he'll just take a bottle one day and surprise us all!