Week 5

I'm sorry, loyal readers, for the lapse in blog posts.  My mom arrived Wednesday afternoon.  I tried to post before she got here, but Cody sat in my lap and closed the computer, so that didn't happen. 

Wednesday morning Cody and I went back through the Starbucks drivethru since the coffee delivery from my mom didn't arrive on Tuesday afternoon.  Cody had a make-up session of oral motor skills on Wednesday during snack session.  Dr. Criado had notified the SLP that she would like to assess Cody on self-feeding.  I was surprised to hear that, but interested to see how Cody would handle it.  A little background- Cody has always been disinterested in self-feeding.  He would hold the spoon and make attempts every few months.  When he started occupational therapy she did not make a big deal over his inability to self-feed, especially coupled his not eating.  Basically she thought it would be harder to get him to eat new things if he was not willing to be spoon fed by someone else. I pushed it at home anyway, because I was tired of feeding Cody before I could eat my own dinner.  I wanted everyone to be able to eat at the same time. Over the summer I finally got him to start regularly feeding himself with a spoon.  He has poor motor skills, so it's not easy for him.  That coupled with an inability to cope with making "mistakes," spills, or messes, made self-feeding a huge challenge.  All spills have to be wiped up immediately and if it's too bad, he'll refuse to feed himself after making a "mistake." He is more successful with yogurt than applesauce, so we would sometimes compromise- he would self-feed the yogurt in return for me feeding him the applesauce.  We pretty much had that down until we got here.  Obviously at Marcus he has been spoon-fed by someone every step of the way.  He got used to not having to self-feed so he pretty much started refusing to self-feed his "safe foods" as soon as we got here.  Fast forward to Wednesday, I really didn't know how Cody would react to being asked to self-feed a new food.  They strategically chose his very favorite new food- strawberry puree! Cody has already told me that he now prefers strawberries over "applesauce in a cup with green in it" (pear applesauce).  In the session, the SLP demonstrated for Cody how she wanted him to pick up the spoon and feed himself a "bite" of strawberries and put the spoon back in the bowl.  She used an empty bowl and spoon.  She placed the bowl of strawberries and spoon in front of Cody and said take a bite.  At first he looked at it.  She demonstrated again after a prescribed amount of time went by and he picked up the spoon and fed himself! He was rewarded with getting to play with a toy. (He had already been told he would get the toy if he took the bite).  He did this over and over, sometimes more successful with the spoon than other times.  Some of the time he would balance the spoon on the edge of the bowl and lever some of the food high enough for him to get his mouth to it and eat it that way, not actually lifting the spoon at all.  He managed to get food in his mouth and not spill it (miraculously) every time.  I was surprised but very happy with his attempts! She also continued working with him on chewing small pieces of pear on a flat "spoon."  He did this many times without problems and sometimes even kept the piece of pear in his mouth and ate it after the chewing part was complete.  

The SLP reported all of this back to Dr. Criado who later spoke to me about Cody's next goal.  He has flown through all of the goals that were initially set for him.  My mom and John being trained are still goals, but he has already met the other goals. He is up to the highest amount of food on the spoon and has 16 purees he will eat.  They reduced the time between bites to 20 seconds, which is much more natural than 30, by the way.  Next they will drop the mouth clean checks, because he's always successfully swallowing his bites. So now a decision needs to be made on what his next goal will be.  They will choose to focus on chewing or working on self-feeding.  They will take my opinion into consideration when deciding on the goal.  My choice is actually whichever skill he can be more successful with at this point. If he's ready for self-feeding, I'm happy for him to go that route, but if the chewing seems to be better at this point, I'm happy to go that way too. Being able to demonstrate better chewing ability would mean he could advance in texture from puree to the next level.  They said they might start with something like getting him to self-feed 5 bites at the beginning of the meal then have the caregiver continue with the rest of the meal- something small like that.  Anyway, this goal setting has been the focus of many conversations over the last couple days.  

Wednesday afternoon my mom finally arrived after having her car repaired in Columbus.  Cody was very glad to see her and the Paw Patrol toy she brought for him! :)  We had a bad experience with UberEats, but finally enjoyed our Doc Chey's for dinner.  

Thursday morning Mom went with us to "food school" and started her training.  Her first step was just to learn to collect data in the observation room as I fed.  She started learning to feed Cody at the next session and progressed through a lot of the steps before we left on Wednesday.  She only had two "grandma moments" where she kissed his finger when he was crying and hugged him when he was asking for a hug.  You're technically supposed to ignore crying, whining, etc, but she still passed! Ha! After food school we went to Whole Foods and picked up dinner.  At bedtime Cody needed to be reassured that CC was not "going to see Boss," meaning she was not leaving and would still be there when he woke up in the morning. 

This morning I woke up feeling nauseous and was a little worried that I had caught a stomach bug that's been going around the center.  Fortunately I started feeling better before we left home.  Mom did three meal sessions with Cody before she had to leave to see Davis play baseball in Columbus this afternoon.  Cody LOVED having her here and we were very nervous about how he would react when she left.  He would not even let her out of his sight for the two days she was here.  He had to wait outside the bathroom door for her even.  Fortunately, he was ok with her having to "go see Boss" and even pressed the elevator button for her when she had to leave food school.  There's a chance she'll be back on Saturday, because she may have a hard time keeping Boss from driving up here to see him this weekend.  Boss has only seen him one time since he left and was pretty jealous of CC getting to come spend a couple days with us.  No decisions have been made yet, so we'll see.  

I think that pretty much brings you up to date on Cody's progress.  In other news, Cole does NOT have strep throat.  Of course we learned this after John kept him home for two days waiting on the test results.  Oh well! Hopefully the time at home means he'll be extra ready to get back to school healthy on Monday.  John has told me that the tornado damage in Cairo is unreal.  He saw more in different areas today and was blown away with how everyone managed to come out unharmed.  Southside is raising money to replaced the playground that was destroyed.  

The mother and grandmother from Ohio who brought the 13 year old boy disappeared this week.  There was some kind of incident on Monday morning with the boy's severe behavior.  I think a decision may have been made to try to treat some of the behavior issues before progressing with feeding treatment.  It's sort of weird after having several lengthy conversations with them that they are suddenly gone without an explanation.  There was also another 13 year old boy who was supposed to have treatment who either never showed up or came and went without my noticing.  These two sudden openings mean that we have a new friend at food school.  They received their call on Monday asking if their 2.5 year old could begin treatment the next day!!! Can you IMAGINE??? They said they couldn't begin Tuesday but would start Wednesday. They had been living with the mother's parents in Swainsboro, but own a home in Smyrna.  Tuesday they moved their belongings back to Smyrna and started treatment Wednesday morning.  We had 2.5 weeks to get ready to move up here.  I can't imagine having less than 2 DAYS! They are a very sweet family and their son is just too cute.  It seems that every single child in feeding treatment has different issues and diagnoses that led them to this point.  It's amazing really.  

Cody and I are hoping the rain will hold out and we can do something tomorrow before storms return on Sunday.  We may or may not have any visitors this weekend, as I mentioned earlier.  Hopefully we'll find something to do other than watching Fizzy Fun Toys and buy new Paw Patrol toys at Target.  

Have a great weekend!