Ongoing Sensory Integration Feeding Therapy
Suzanne Our Feeding SuperHero
Year four with you, and oh-the-progress we’ve made!
When Charlotte was 8 months, we had an Early Intervention assessment appointment at our home. A team comes to review your child in their natural environment. Our visit had been spurned due to Charlotte failing her Universal Newborn Hearing Screening in the hospital. I had never talked to anyone who’d had this assessment before or known anyone, at least who’d talked to me about it.
Early Intervention (EI) was developed to help “kids who are not developing as expected or who have a medical condition that can delay normal development” and their families in their natural environments from birth to 2-years-old.
I was starting to wrap my head around it being a fact that Charlotte had hearing loss, but what that really meant for her and our family I was uncertain of. The EI team hung out with Charlotte and me in our living room. They had her play in certain ways and do little game tasks, as they watched and listened and reviewed what Charlotte’s needs might be.
Years of sensory integration feeding therapy, and Charlotte tries her first fudge pop. For the win!!! I always love listening to how clear her speech is getting. This is 4 1/2 years after Cochlear Implant activation!
So the hearing thing I was ready for, but the, “We are very concerned about the fact your child is only drinking breastmilk at 8 months,” really threw me. I was proud of what an amazing nurser Charlotte was, and I’d worked hard to provide it to her, as I had my first two kids. Some women find nursing second nature, I was the “get mega coaching my lactation consultant” type. That said, Char had figured it out and we were rocking and rolling. She’d nurse anywhere, was discrete and I thought, thriving…
I was open to all the suggestions they were tossing my way for hearing loss, but pushed back big time on the recommendation for feeding therapy, the “She’d eat when she was ready” mindset.
Fast forward to around April 2014 when I was eight-weeks pregnant with baby number four, and I began being all-day morning sick. I was expecting it because I had been the same way with the first three, but I hadn’t taken into consideration how much it was going to impact Charlotte. By 14 months she was still really only nursing, eating a little vanilla yogurt and well, that’s it. In fact any other thing I’d tried to give her, she’d basically gag and vomit.
My milk supply was dropping and her food supply was going away. I had to get this girl eating some other foods.
Working with the EI feeding therapists, wasn’t really cutting it. And in fact, much of what we did was still a horrible experience. Charlotte and I were basically crying with every meal. Her, scared of the food, and me scared for her health. She was eating some baby foods, some very thinned out baked sweet potato, but zero real solid foods she had to chew. Why wasn’t she chewing?
There was a wait at the Children’s Hospital Feeding Clinic and all my hearing resources really didn’t have a deep reach into feeding issues.
My pediatrician was concerned-ish, but more open to letting Charlotte figure it out. She only ever recommended the Feeding Clinic.
By the time baby number four, Emma Leah, arrived, Char and I were exhausted. I often joked that teaching my daughter being deaf and hard of hearing to hear and speak was a breeze compared to teaching her to eat.
Enter a tear-filled prayer on my knees one afternoon home alone with just the little girls, one final google search and the organic search result that has made all the difference for Charlotte: Sensory Integrated Feeding Therapy with Suzanne McKeever, my eating angel!
Our very first consultation session began to open my heart to hope. Suzanne said we weren’t going to force Charlotte to eat, we were going to first get her to not be scared of food and then slowly help her build the skillset she needed to learn to love eating. This was truly my dream come true.
We initially went an hour a week. By year four we go every other week. I wrote about Charlotte’s progress to date, here.
This week in Feeding Therapy, Charlotte dipped small pieces of Wheat Thins into hummus, as well as peeled a cheese stick and nibbled on the cheese smashed on top of the cracker. No tears. No struggle. Clearly speaking and sharing her thoughts about it. Resistant to the idea of “new foods,” but confidence building every day that she can eat them, even if they are “different.”
Today Charlotte turned SIX-years-old and enjoyed picking the rainbow sprinkles, licking off the icing. Still no donut eating yet, but we are getting closer!
