OT: Week 12, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

We didn’t go to OT last week since we were living it up at the beach for Easter. As far as eating goes, these last two weeks have been slightly frustrating. I thought that as Averi felt better, she would start eating better as well, but it appears that she has followed true Averi style and taken several steps backwards.

She now refuses to take her bottle at all and has resorted back to arching her back, crying, and even pushing the bottle out of her mouth and replacing it with her thumb (which makes for getting food all over the place). The last time she did this we gave her a several day break from the bottle which helped a lot so I tried it again with zero success.

In my desperateness to find some way to get milk into her I tried adding baby food to her bottles. This sort of worked, but only with fruit…the squash milk didn’t go over so well. At one point I even put straight prunes in her bottle and she drank a whole ounce (30mls). I finally came to the conclusion that she doesn’t like the taste of my milk…you know the milk that I supply to her soy and dairy free and through the process of using a pump (no, my feelings aren’t hurt, why do you ask?).

Spoon feeding is also not going as well as it used to, which is depressing because it has always been her strength. She insists on putting her thumb in her mouth after every bite, thus getting food all over everything except in her mouth. I realize that this is her coping tool but it is proving to be counterproductive. I have started trying to get her to use her pacifier at meal times but she still prefers her thumb. Remember the days when I was excited that she was sucking her thumb because it was giving her oral stimulation? Yeah, I’m over it now.

When I asked Frances about these new issues today, she explained that the aversion to my milk is probably because she associates that flavor with pain since she has such bad reflux. I was worried that flavoring it might be counterproductive but she said that it’s fine and we will slowly wean her off of it.

So we made up a nice bottle of thickened milk and prunes and Frances tried to feed Averi. Of course she drank the whole 30 mls and then another 20 mls before it was time to go. Frances just said to keep using chin support and make sure to pound on her back every once in a while to break up the wetness. We’ll see.