Just an update - no pictures

Cole and Mom went for speech and feeding therapy this morning. This whole experience has been really interesting. We discovered that Cole is very sensitive to new textures when it comes to food. It surprised us, as he clearly loves to put toys and random objects in his mouth (including the coffee table).

We started the session with his bottle, and his therapist, Cathy, was very happy with his progress. Thickening his "milk" seems to help him keep it all down. We tried next to introduce "crunchy" textures. Cathy first started by massaging his gums. He seemed to like that. She then moved on to smashing up a piece of rice cereal, and putting crumbs in his mouth. He wasn't sure about it, but sort of chewed... and then he puked.

So, we moved on.

We then tried giving him a piece of a rice cracker. He took a piece in his hand, put it to his mouth, and then started bawling. We spent the rest of the session trying to calm him down, and giving him lots of praise for even just touching a piece of "crunchy".

He seems to be sensitive all over to new textures, so we'll work on touching his hands, arms, and cheeks with his crunchies to get him used to the textures outside of his mouth. Once he gets a little more comfortable with them on his skin, he might be more willing to put them in his mouth. We'll let him play with pieces of cereal, cracker, and rice cake as well.

We've got some work to do, but Mom feels like she's understanding Cole more and more. When he was a younger baby, he didn't like having his back rubbed. He seemed to prefer patting and firm pressure (and still does, to an extent). Now we know why.

We'll see how our next sessions go, and might bring in an occupational therapist to work on massage and compression techniques to help de-sensitize him a bit.

As far as the speech aspect goes, we'll continue with exaggerating the consonant sounds, and will add in some puckering and kissing sounds during his meals.

We'll get you figured out sooner or later, Big Boy!