Feeding

I would just like to vent my frustration.
The feeding clinic gave us a run-down on things we should be doing when we feed Presley. I already give her praise when she takes a "bite" (and by "bite" I mean actually taking a spoon full of liquid baby food), I try to do mouthing exercises (trying to get her to mimic chewing...I use a yo gabba gabba song that goes 'bite bite bite, chomp chomp chomp). BUT these "tools" they gave us suck. I'm sure they work and I’m sure eventually she'll get use to them but I just want to share them with you.

First up we have the "probe"


Its use to stimulate the tongue. It blows. Not only does it have a suggestive name, it’s tiny and easy to shove down your kid’s throat. Especially when she’s jerking her head all around to get the weird thing out of her mouth. They say "gently tap it on her tongue three times" RIGHT. She’s screaming, biting on it, shaking her head back and fourth.

Next we have the "grabber"

I've got Presley to bite on this one time. We use the long end, to place on the side of her mouth and get her chomp down for three seconds. It’s pretty much the same as the "probe" she’s screaming, shaking her head back and fourth and shakes at the SIGHT of It.

And finally we have the "Tri-chew"

This one I like, it has small knobby ends that are easy to get into the side of her mouth. However, the feeding clinic was out of them (to give us anyway) so I had to order ours, which is still not here.

So those are some feeding "tools" they all look so weird. If I didn’t have a child with these issues I’d think they we're sex toys or something.

We had Presley's feeding "intake" appointment thursday. I was pretty disapointed.

Heres a link to her full report:

Read the report here.

It didnt really tell us anything we didnt know. The wait list is super long and quite frankly we wont be able to afford it. As a matter of fact when we went in (we have great insurence) we had to pay a co-pay for EACH PERSON that was in the room. Even if they didnt do anything. It ended up being $145. So imagine what it would be for 5 days a week, 6 weeks, 6 hours a day.

We have a new OT so hopefully she'll be able to work on Presley's feeding, rather than us doing the feeding program.