Milk, Milk, and more Milk - Feeding Clinic, Weekend 1

On Thursday and Friday, the therapists brought me into the room for 2 feeding sessions each day, to train me on their protocol for drinking only. (It sounds like they will start training me on feeding next week.) So, this weekend, I have been instructed to "feed" Elli whole milk with Carnation instant breakfast (CIB) 6 times per day. She gets 2 oz. first thing in the morning, then 4 oz per feeding the rest of the day. Once her 15 minutes are up, she gets to try table food if interested.

As a result, today she drank 22 ounces of whole milk with CIB in it! A week ago, I considered myself VERY fortunate if she drank 4 ounces all day long! If she takes at least 3 oz, I'm not supposed to nurse her afterwards, with the exception of the before bed feeding. Unfortunately, I kinda forgot that when we started her naptime routine, and said, "Elli, it's time for grub (our code word for nursing)" and then realized I wasn't supposed to do that! Oh well...I still will only have to nurse her 3 times total today...which is a drastic reduction! Hopefully tomorrow will only be 2 times. What a relief for me!

We also cut out night feedings starting on Thursday night...they said she was finally getting enough liquid and calories that she didn't not need to nurse. She's still waking up crying 1-3 times per night, so we're not getting full night's sleep yet, but that will come soon.

The best news is that Elli gained 8 ounces between Monday morning and Friday morning. Yep, that's right - a half a pound in only 4 days! I'm thrilled, and so is the team at the clinic - they said they never have kids make this kind of progress. In fact, they said they never start training the parent in the first week, but since Elli's doing so well, they decided to start.

One other tidbit is that Elli's mouth muscles are now much stronger - her oral motor skills are up to age level finally. The speech therapist said there was a drastic change from the original evaluation 5-6 weeks ago until now. She said that Elli will probably handle textured foods much better now that she's got the oral motor skills to handle them. Here's hoping! This also explains why her speech has taken off in the last 6 weeks - her mouth can finally do what her brain has wanted it to do all along!

So far, they have only offered her pureed pears, pureed bananas, and yogurt for feeding sessions, plus a few Cheerios/pretzels to continue working on her crunching skills. This next week, they plan to introduce a variety of foods and see how she handles the non-preferred foods. The following week, they hope to introduce more textures, and then we'll go from there.

Thanks again for the prayers! Clearly God has answered many prayers very directly throughout this whole process!