Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Feeding therapy

So today we had the evalution with the feeding therapist for Eleri. I had to take in foods she likes, foods she doesn't like, her cup, her bottle, spoons, etc... plus a 3 day food diary so they could see what she's been doing here at home.
The feeding therapist said that it looks like we're trying to feed her all day long. Well, ya! We are. The ped had me so frazzled with trying to get weight on her I've been offering her food every 2 hours to try to get her to gain.
She also tried a few different things, and watched her behavior, and probably some things that I didn't know she was doing like watching the two of us together. So she thinks that Eleri would benefit from feeding therapy and she'll make the calls and file the paperwork to get the ball rolling with that. It should take about a week.
In the meantime, she had some things she wants us to try.
  • Night wean her again, so that she wakes up hungry
  • Stretch out the times between when we offer her foods, so she's going longer without eating/nursing.
  • offer her things on forks and spoons, even if we usually wouldn't use them... like ball up a piece of cheese and put it on a spoon. Be silly with it. Pretend that it's our food and she can't have it, put the spoon on her leg, etc.
  • No more putting food where she can get to it if she wants it. It goes in the high chair at set times and that's it.
She said that she wants us to try to increase the volume that Eleri will take at one time, and the way to do that is to space things out. I had been night weaning her before, but stopped when the weight issue cropped up because I figured she needed the calories. She wants me to go back to that because Eleri wasn't gaining, but she wasn't losing either, and now that she'll take the instant breakfast and flax seed oil, we need to try to get her eating in normal patterns.
She said that Eleri is the type who would happily nurse every two hours around the clock. Boy did she get that right! We're going to try to change that, and going to try to help her associate food with yummy and that nice feeling of a fully tummy.
So that's where we are for now. We'll be trying these tips while we wait for her to start regular feeding therapy.

3 comments:

Frances said...

That's surprising to an extent. It makes sense, but it is counterintuitive for a concerned mother to do without counsel. It is so nice to have pro advice. Otherwise, just too scary.

Drea said...

I'm glad she had some ideas for you Milli. Sorry you have more appts to deal with. Hopefully it wont take long to get her on a regular schedual.

Grumpy said...

Man oh man! That sounds so like Meghan happy to nurse around the clock, and she would always eat on the run, and I would always leave food out for her too! I'm glad you're getting counsel... I agree with Frances that it does seem counter-intuitive, but then that may be why M is a toothpick and S is solid