OT: Week 26, Fruit Leather

Averi has just all of a sudden (over the last month or so) started doing really well with eating.  Since figuring out her pincer grasp and how to use it to get food to her mouth she has been loving her puffs.  As long as we only giver her 2 or 3 at a time she does really well getting them to her mouth.  (I think it helped getting peer pressure from her 10 month old cousin this last week too.)

Drinking with the honey bear is still going really well too.  Every once in a while we can get her to eat/drink all of the calories she needs for the day and we only have to use the pump to give her water.  I feel like we might actually be getting closer to getting rid of the G-Tube in the distant future.

At OT today we decided to work with Averi some more on self-feeding.  First Frances gave her a fruit leather to see if she liked being able to hold onto the food while she chewed on it.  She tore it to pieces!  It was so funny.  Frances was a little worried that it might be too flat because we occasionally saw it just sitting on her tongue, but she managed to eat all of it without gagging at all.

Then we got out some peaches and cut them into little chunks (she still needs her food pretty small).  Frances out a piece in Averi’s cheek and she just started chewing away.  Right now she mostly chews up and down (which just mashes the food) but every once in a while she would us a grinding motion (which actually breaks the food up).  I think it helps that she now has 3 molars!  (You have no idea what I went through to get this picture, but there are her two blurry upper molars.)

By the end of the session, Averi was getting mad at us if we tried to feed her even though the peaches were really slippery and she had a hard time picking them up.  We were laughing because when I first sat her down I had to bring her legs together in front of her, but once the peaches were on the floor in front of her she no longer had any problem keeping her legs together.

She did so well that Frances gave her another fruit leather and she once again chowed down on it.  I left the session really pumped and went to the store to buy more fruit leathers and cans of peaches and oranges to cut up for her to eat.  Can you believe that she is actually feeding herself, little as it might be?  Who would have thought?