Kyle Eating

Kyle's eating has been an interesting thing to me.  From a mommy perspective:  kyle is doing great.  if you were to put him next to all the other 23 weekers I know I would say his eating is miraculous.  This is an area that kyle has not had much trouble in.  since the 1st bottle in NICU kyle eaten like a champ.  no aspirating, no reflux, no Gtube.  He has done great!  When we got home - same story - and then we started cereal.  He did start spitting up but that was about it.  NOTHING - again compared to what many other micro preemies go through everyday.  As we got further and further into rice cereal he started gagging in addition to the spitting up - he would only gag on the 1st few bites of rice cereal then he would get used to it.  Then when we started baby food he did great - some foods made him gag and some did not.  I had a hard time finding a pattern.  So we did a swallow study - pulmonology though that he was not coming off oxygen b/c he might be aspirating or aspirating after refluxing.  Both proved to be negative.  Kyle did have an insufficient suck/swallow pattern and was recommend to speech therapy.  Many of the doctors, nurses and therapist also did not like that kyle was disinterested in eating and especially in the bottle.  I really in my gut felt like he was just much to busy to be bothered having to eat!  My other 2 kids did this also at 10 months.  I think early intervention is imperative to all micro preemies - so on to the speech therapist we went.  She feels like kyle has a hard time getting organized to swallow - I can't remember actually if I journaled about this a few days ago - anyway -  she suggested a few exercises while we eating and they have worked great.  They also suggested a registered dietician.  She has been great.  We are actually switching kyle to regular formula.  They are thinking the high calorie is not needed.  He is 10 months old - 6 months corrected and almost 19 pounds!  and he wakes up after 12 hours of sleep 13 hours without eating and could care less about a bottle!  so they are thinking this will help!  however b/c kyle is on WIC I have to get the okay from the high risk pedi to give to my pedi so write a Rx to take to WIC so that I can get the new formula.  (well - get it paid for anyway!)  So it took 2 doctors, 1 therapist, a dietician, and a government worker but we are getting kyle new formula this week!

Kyle is doing good on baby food - we are now on stage 2 mixed foods and he is in heaven.  the gaging only seems to happen sometimes - I really think it is the organized thing that the speech therapist was talking about.  When food passes our uvula (no idea how to spell that) it triggers a swallow.  We don't think about it, it just happens!  For kyle they are thinking this might take some time to get "organized".  if he is not ready for it or not concentrating or paying attention then it catches him off guard and he gags on it.  but then when he catches up and his brain recognizes that we are eating - he does great!  The speech therapist called this an immaturity - i am thinking this means he will get better and outgrow this.  To me that is an even better option than learning to compensate for it.

So that is the scoop there.  OHHH - the whole point of that story and update - the OT, PT, ST all recommend that I put kyle's food in front of him to play with while we eat.  So I do - well one day i got called away before I started feeding kyle.  one of the other boys needed something.  when I came back - I found an impatient little boy trying to eat dinner by himself!

What a great milestone!  he was trying to get his food to his mouth!  I was so proud of Him!  He really seems to do things in his own time - just as i get a bit worried - the therapists move into high gear - kyle amazes us all!