Thursday, August 28, 2008

Weekly Update -- 18 - 24 August 2008

Yay, I'm 85 weeks old today!

Masinja had a very eventful week. On Monday he had a feeding evaluation done by an Occupational Therapist and a Speech Therapist, who is also a feeding specialist. We had gotten a referral, because we were having trouble transitioning him to table food and to a sippy cup. We found out that there is actually a food continuum and that we had skipped a level completely!! I don't know about anyone else, but I figured since the baby foods are labled stage 1, stage 2 and stage 3, that you just go from one stage to the next. Well, that is not the case. Before you move on to stage 3, you're supposed to introduce things like carrot sticks and celery stalks and pretzels and such. These things are not intended for consumption, but are meant to teach the baby how to chew and to increase the gag reflex. Well, needless to say, we're having to backtrack with Masinja now. The OT and ST both said that we are feeding him what we should be feeding him though.

The week before his evaluation I was actually successful in getting him to eat the gerber graduates meat sticks and cut up veggies and fruit. He still isn't exactly chewing them though. He has a high palate due to being intubated for so long. He basically just puts whatever we give him in the indentation and then smushes it with his tongue.

We also pretty much got him transitioned to a sippy cup the day before the evalution too. T.M. forgot to put the rubber stopper in the sippy cup Sunday and Masinja chugged his juice! From that point on he was pretty much ok with the sippy cup with and without the rubber stopper. Some mornings he still gets a bottle, but we're working on that.

The most exciting news from this week though is that Masinja started walking on his own!! T.M. and I were sitting in the living room watching TV and Masinja just pulled himself up to the coffee table and proceeded to start walking. We were so excited!! He is still pretty wobbly but I'm sure he will get better as he gets more confident. His physical therapist was so happy to see him walking on Friday. She just said, "Masinja, I have been waiting for this!"

Our next goal is to get him to stand up without having to pull himself up on a piece of furniture. His therapist was so impressed with his progress that she said he can go back to a biweekly schedule. She is hoping that by the time we go back in 2 weeks he will be standing up on his own and then he can be released. We will take some video of him walking and post it next week.

That's all for now.

Peace,
T.M.M.

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