Eating!

On Monday, Caden started his intensive feeding therapy program through Clinic 4 Kidz. This is an in-home based feeding program which uses a behavioral philosophy in dealing with kids with feeding disorders. We were put on the waiting list of this program as of December 28, 2009 and we started the program on December 27, 2010. It took exactly 1 year for him to start. I have been very discouraged about this. I thought all along that we were missing out on the opportunity of getting to eat by mouth before he got too opinionated about it. I knew that the younger he started, the better the outcome.

Little did I trust in God's timing... This whole year, Caden has been focusing on many gross motor skills. Because of this, many other things have taken a back seat, so to speak, including his speech and language and eating abilities. As kids develop, they typically focus on one skill at a time and once they have mastered it they change their focus to another area. I never considered this when thinking about his eating. But, it makes sense. Caden only truly mastered the art of walking about a week before Christmas. That meant once he did that, his brain was able to switch gears and work on something else. Apparently that is eating!

Dr. Patel is the clinical director of Clinic 4 Kidz and Michelle is the therapist working with Caden. They were both in our home on Monday to get him started. The initial visit covers 5 consecutive days for about 10-11 hours/day. It is truly amazing what they have been able to do with Caden. Dr. Patel was only here on Monday but she is in touch with Michelle to follow-up on Caden's progress.

Even on the first day, Caden was willingly allowing small bites of food in his mouth. This is ground-breaking for him! He has NEVER in his whole life WILLINGLY allowed food in his mouth. They started with a goal of getting him to eat ¼ oz of food in a session. We have been doing about 10 sessions/day each lasting between 5-15 minutes. He did so well the first day that on day 2, they increased his volume at each session to ½ oz of food. He has to eat the whole thing before he can get down otherwise he learns he can refuse food and we could end up back in square 1. Luckily he has been doing this very easily so it hasn't been a problem.

And, to completely surprise us all, including Michelle, he has been signing for food in between sessions. He will sign the word and then walk to the high chair to be picked up. Michelle said she has never worked with another child who did that.

On Wednesday I did my first sessions with him and he did pretty well with me. He had a couple moments of testing me to see how I would react, but I was able to stick to what Michelle had taught me. He figured out fairly quickly that I was serious about what we were doing.

He's done a variety of foods including vanilla coconut milk yogurt, strawberry & peach soy yogurt, blended applesauce (to make it as smooth as possible), pureed bananas, pureed sweet potatoes, pureed carrots, pureed lentil soup, and today we are going to do avocado. He has a hard time with anything with texture, but so far seems to be doing okay with different flavors.

Caden has far exceeded my expectations with how well he would do this week and the week isn't even over yet! If things continue like this, when Michelle comes back at the end of January for 2 days, I think he will have made a lot of progress. Just check out the video I posted below. It looks like he's been eating by mouth his whole life! Thank you all for your continued prayers in this process. The journey is certainly only beginning. We have a long way to go.