Week 1, Day 1

Nearly done with our first day of therapy.  Matt is with Sunshine at her last session today while I stay back at the Ronald McDonald House with Buttercup.

At the first two sessions, they had me feed Sunshine while the doctor and therapists observed from a video viewing room.  At the first session, we tried Cheerios, apple sauce, oatmeal and milk.  Reaction was pretty typical for Sunshine.  She liked the cheerios and started off happily eating them She was barely willing to try to applesauce when presented, but liked to play with it on her tray.  By the time we offered oatmeal or milk, she'd had enough and absolutely refused to try either one.

Session two we had PB sandwich, vanilla pudding, cooked carrots, a slice of cheese, and milk.  This time she did like the milk, but was not efficiently keeping it in her mouth.  She ate a few bites of pudding and a few bites of carrots (those took a long time to chew though).  She even tried five or six bites of the cheese, which was completely new!  But, when I tried to give her the sandwich, she was not at all interested in trying it.  And that was the one I told them she would like!

The third session was different.  I got to observe while the doctor and therapist sat on either side of Sunshine.  They wanted to start our time here with getting Sunshine used to them and familiar with the structure of the therapy session so they did practice with a "dry spoon" and empty bottle so there was no menacing food to react to.  Sunshine did great.  She did really well at opening her mouth to receive the spoon, closing her lips around the spoon and taking bite after bite after bite and pretend sips from the straw-bottle.  A few times it seemed Sunshine thought it was a joke that there was nothing on the spoon, and they could tell she was really trying to suck on the bottle even though nothing was coming out.

Therapist doing stretching exercises on Sunshine's mouth.

Matt just came back and said for the fourth session they added water to the bottle and spoon.  She spilled a bit of the water out of her mouth, so they will work with her on keeping her mouth closed while drinking.  Also, with her bites, she would put her tongue out when she wasn't supposed to, so that is something else they will work on.  (I think it's because she wants to taste what's coming before letting it into her mouth, but that's just my idea.

Each session begins with setting a timer and Sunshine gets to push the Start button.  Then, after each bite, she gets to watch a bit of a cartoon and gets lots of verbal praise.  She's already very good at the "self praise" and would repeat "Good Job" while giving herself a thumbs up.  She loves the attention!

Sunshine's schedule is therapy at 8 AM, 10 AM, 1 PM, 3 PM.  Each session lasts about an hour.  Tomorrow they may start giving her food!  We are certainly tired at the end of the first day.  We were not fully rested going into it and felt quite overwhelmed at the beginning.  Now I'm less overwhelmed, just tired.  Buttercup and I did some "school" while Matt took Sunshine to the clinic, which was a lot of fun.  Looking forward to sleeping tonight!

Buttercup and Mat Man!