Diary of Hope: Feeding Therapy Goodbye :(

I think one of the hardest therapies for me to leave for Caden is feeding therapy. The reason is because I knew he was caught up or close to it in all his other therapies. Feeding, however, is one area where we still have significant issues. For almost exactly one year, Caden has been participating in a behavior-based feeding therapy program called Clinic 4 Kidz. This is an in-home based intensive feeding program with great results.

We started off slowly with Caden gradually taking more and more volume at each oral feeding. And we were able to reduce his tube feedings. By the middle of September we had stopped all food/fluids through Caden's g-tube! It's absolutely incredible to even be writing that! What a huge milestone. However, that comes with a whole new set of issues...

Although Caden is eating and drinking 100% by mouth, he is not a typical eater for a child his age. Children who are almost three are eating what everyone else eats, just in smaller pieces. Caden on the other hand will only eat pureed food and he will not feed himself. He strongly dislikes eating anything. There are really no foods he particularly likes. He “tolerates” eating. He does not enjoy it and sometimes he suffers through an entire meal with crying.

It is so hard as a parent to watch your child struggle with something that seems so natural to the majority of the population. Every meal with him is a feeding therapy session and is quite stressful for me. Even if the meal goes well and he doesn't gag, retch, or cry, I am always on the ready to deal with any behavioral issues that might come up.

But I have to say I am so incredibly thankful for Michelle, our therapist with Clinic 4 Kidz. She is absolutely great! She is always coming up with new things to try or new ideas of ways to get Caden to do something. Our biggest challenge now, and over the past several months, is getting him to chew his food. Anything something goes in his mouth that needs to be chewed, he freaks out. He screams, cries, holds his mouth open, and outright refuses to close. It's really hard to deal with. How can you teach a child that he needs to chew his food in order to progress to eating what the rest of us eat???

Michelle always remained calm even when Caden was throwing a tantrum about one thing or another. I have a much harder time with that. Probably because I am more emotionally involved that she is because he is my son. I am so thrilled that we aren't using the g-tube anymore. It is a wonderful thing and we look forward to the day when we can get it removed entirely! I know we wouldn't have gotten to this point without Michelle's help. She was instrumental in making this happen. December 14 and 15 were our last session days with her and I am nervous how things will go once we don't have her help anymore. I have learned a lot over the past year, but we still have a long way to go and I hope we don't lose any ground.

Thank you so much for everything, Michelle! We can't thank you enough for everything you have done for Caden and our family. We miss you already!

You can watch the video below to get an idea of what a session of feeding therapy looked like. It's a LOT of work!