Feeding Therapy

Owen has had the same OT/Feeding Therapist since he was just a few months old. Connie has been here every single week. He went from not even letting a bottle nipple come into his mouth, to licking a baby oreo, to eating everything in sight. Or at least trying to.

Owen doesn't have a lack of interest in eating. He just doesn't know what to do with the food after he puts it in his mouth. For the longest time now, he will put almost any food in his mouth and taste it. He scoops it into his left cheek and stores it there until I scoop it out. We call him our little "chipmunk". It's not unusual to find a chunk of bacon from breakfast or chicken from dinner while brushing his teeth at night.

He loves the social aspect of eating and really loves to feed himself and try new foods. He likes foods that are spicy and savory. He has always preferred foods that require chewing and tongue coordination. He's never been a fan of pureed foods or soft foods, ie: yogurt, humus, baby foods. When given the option, he would eat steak and veges over fruits or dairy. He likes noodles of all kinds and beans... beans are his favorite!!

Our biggest challenge is teaching him to swallow his food. He loves to drink and swallows just fine. We don't have any issues with aspirating, thankgoodness. We can't figure out why he doesn't want to swallow his food after chewing it. We continue to work on it everyday and eventually, he'll figure it all out.

Another big issue with eating is his lack of feeling motivated to eat. He's never hungry and so he doesn't feel the need to eat, to become satisfied. His little tummy won't tolerate large volumes of food at once, so I feed him 2 oz of blended food (in his Gtube) every 30 minutes. This goes on from 8am to 10pm. In addition to this, I put him on a night drip from 10:30pm to 2am. No wonder I have no life. Ha.

So that's where we stand with feeding. I am so happy that Owen has a love of food. Healthy food. We are trying to reintroduce easy to eat foods. For example, I wanted to go back and revisit yogurt today while Connie was here.

He took a couple tastes and was okaaaay with it. He didn't hate it. He just didn't eat much of it. He doesn't like to get really messy, so we decided to challenge him.
We decided to play in the yogurt and have a little OT time. Owen drew circles, squares and lines in the yogurt.
He loved getting messy and we got a couple more bites of yogurt into him. I'm sure we would have had more eating success if I grilled him up a steak, but we really need to focus on swallowing.
After we washed up and changed his clothes. His speech therapist Sherene showed up with her two new grad students from ASU. Owen had four therapist there just for him. I could have disappeared and he wouldn't have cared. He was showing off BIG time. He pulled out all his therapy toys, shopping cart full of food and made them drinks in his play kitchen. He is such an awesome boy!

Owen is so lucky to have such fun therapists that give him so much love and attention. I have a really laid back style of parenting and I like his therapy sessions to be fun. Something he can look forward to each week, rather than stress about. He has come so far in such a short amount of time. This momma is proud!