Ali has been doing great. She started eating again on October 6th and very quickly started trying new flavors and textures. She is now very happily eating 15 or 16 ounces per day and enjoying lots of different purees. She’s happy to eat pudding, veggies, fruit, baby cereal or yogurt. We have decided that she is probably sensitive to cows milk protein so we have eliminated cows milk from her diet and we’re giving her pudding made with soy milk and yogurt made with coconut milk. She eats quickly and seems pretty happy about it! It seems as if each day she eats a bit more than the previous day and is now getting at least a third of her calories orally as opposed to through her G-tube. We have started to add some “crumbs” to her purees to slowly start working towards chewing and she seems to be doing okay with that. My guess is that she doesn’t really enjoy eating the crumbs. She has also started eating some fork mashed fruits. I love progress! For some reason, the more Ali eats, the more congested she seems. We have had x-rays done to check for aspiration and her chest is clear so we have no idea why eating causes congestion. Unlike in the past, this time she has not stopped eating so that shows that her oral feeding is becoming more established and natural for her. It is now an expectation that at meal time she will eat.
Ali is also doing well in gymnastics! She is now at the point where she can hang all by herself on the rings for a few seconds and on Monday we actually let her swing a bit on them. She can crawl through a tunnel and is getting quite good at walking with assistance across the balance beam. She also enjoys doing front rolls with our help and jumping onto the crash pads from the vault. She has just started to stand herself up without needing to pull up which is a skill that we have been working on for MONTHS! Life is easier when you can get up and go without bum scooting over to the coffee table to pull yourself up I guess!
She is doing great in both of her school programs. She`s enjoying them and while I am sure that the language enrichment program is very challenging for her, she seems to be getting a lot out of it. She brings her homework home every Wednesday so we work hard at it and I think she enjoys doing her work. She seems a little apprehensive when I drop her off at the language program but according to the teachers, she`s fine once I leave.
Anyways, thanks for reading!