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!