Moving on

Tonight Mason is receiving the last bag of breastmilk. I am a little sad but glad it has made it this far! He has been receiving half formula and half breastmilk for quite sometime to try to help with reflux. Now we are on to complete formula. Atleast he got his "liquid gold" for quite some time!

Father's Day

As we take this time to remember our Father's in our life I am so thankful for my husband, Josh. He is a wonderful, loving, and giving father. Corbin and Mason and I are blessed to have him in our lives!  We are blessed to have his strength when we were weak this past year but most of all we are blessed because of his positive attitude. I can count on one hand the times I have seen him frustrated or even upset (and remember we have been married 7 years and have known each other for 8 years). His positive attitude and overall trust in God was key in this past year with our boys. We love you!

And to all of our Fathers (or otherwise now known as Ray Ray, Peepaw, Papa Jump, Pop Pop, and Papaw) we just want you to know that your support and love has meant so much this year. You have been there with us through thick and thin and we love you all. These men (and others not pictured who have already passed) helped to make us who we are today. We love you all very much and wish you Happy Father's Day!

Mason eats cake

Today we celebrated Corbin's 3rd and Mason's 1st birthday. We are thankful to those who came out with us to celebrate! I will post a lot more pictures later but I had to share this video. I wasn't even going to try any cake with Mason but I decided to go ahead and he loved it. He dug his hands in and finally fed himself! He definitely thought it was good!

Roadtrip

We are thankful that today went well. Josh and I loaded up the car early this morning and headed to Chapel Hill. Overall, we are encouraged by what they had to say. They made A LOT of changes but  the goal is to get him more comfortable in his tummy in an effort to decrease the gag so that Mason will want to oral feel. It was VERY interesting to participate in this being an SLP. This team was great and they really think that they can help Mason (and have seen numerous kids like him). The encouraging thing is he does LOVE to put things in his mouth and is very tolerant of exercises, etc. So what we are going to work on right now is for his tongue to become more like a spoon instead of thrusting forward when you go in his mouth. It is like he is trying to push against whatever is entering in his mouth (he doesn't do this when HE puts stuff in his mouth so my philosophy on this is it is part of his oral aversion because he is trying to take his tongue get  what he considers "bad" things out of his mouth). He will move food back but his initial reaction is to thrust his tongue forward. We are going to continue to taste purees 2-3 times a day giving cheek and jaw support and lots of oral motor. And they completely changed around his feeding schedule which is exciting! He was still eating every 3 hours which is a lot considering he just turned 1 (almost 9 months adjusted). We have a long way to go but we will get there! We will be commuting again 2 times a month for the next few months for therapy and hopefully we will get some speech therapy started at home as well to carryover these skills (of course I'm going to do my best at this as well)! So we were encouraged and Mason was his usual charming self, so of course they feel in love! Thank you for your prayers! We've got to get this boy eating!

Feeding team

I am requesting prayers tonight as we prepare for a big day tomorrow. We are headed to Chapel hill to meet with their feeding team to hopefully move forward in helping Mason take by mouth. We have been doing trials of baby food and he often will gag and throw up during feeds. We are praying they can help us move in the right direction to strengthen his oral muscles. He finally began with OT last week and that went well and she was encouraged with his skills. His gag reflex is just very sensitive! But it doesn't seem to bother him. He just keeps on going and smiling!

I love that this boy is so happy! He cracks me up! He is also so chatty now! And check out this brother love. I know the picture quality isn't great but I love their sweet faces!



Thanks for your prayers! I will update tomorrow once we know something!