It has been a while since I have done a post on Lucy's oral texture aversion. As some of you know, Lucy will be moving to a different day care center soon! We met with her new day care provider today to discuss her special feeding needs and I thought that I would give you an update too. :)
About 4 months ago Lucy had a feeding evaluation with a speech therapist because she was really struggling with the transition from pureed food to any table foods. This fall Lucy was only eating Stage 2 baby foods (very pureed with zero texture), she was not self feeding at all, and she was very selective about what type of sippy cups that she would use for drinking (she would only drink out of cups with spouts that were the same material as nipples for a bottle). Lucy would often gag while eating and would sometimes even vomit if she had too much texture in a bite.
The speech therapist told us to keep presenting Lucy with new things to eat, to encourage her with different types of sippy cups, and to s-l-o-w-l-y introduce more texture into Lucy's feeding routines. She told us to be very patient and persistent and that, eventually, Lucy would become more acclimated to texture.
So, here is where we are today:
Areas of Progress:
1. Lucy now drinks out of any type of sippy cup, no matter if the spout is soft or hard. Yay!
2. Lucy will eat crackers! This was a huge breakthrough for our little girl. When Lucy was ~ 13 months old she took her first nibble out of a graham cracker and now she will eat grahams, saltines, basically any item with cracker consistency. What is interesting is that Lucy will still not self-feed Cheerios or puffs, or little crackers, she needs something big that she can just nibble off of, she can manage a bigger cracker much better in her mouth than a tiny piece of cereal.
3. Lucy can tolerate more texture than she could a few months ago. She can now eat purees that are thicker or that have a few chunks in them!
Challenges:
1. Outside of crackers, Lucy still does not self feed. She has never really put any food in her mouth other than grahams or saltines. She will still play with food, crush it in her little hands, or happily feed the dogs - she is just not interested in eating it on her own.
2. Lucy seems to be getting more anxious about trying new things and she displays more oral defensiveness than she used to - if she does not want to try something, she will not let it happen!
3. Lucy's diet is still mostly purees and yogurt for meals and snack, she is not eating what a typical 15 month old would beat this point. Mama is sometimes jealous to see other kiddos just happily eating off of their parents' plates. That being said, Lucy is at an appropriate weight and she is a happy and healthy girl so we are very grateful. We are also thankful for the progress that she has made so far!
Lucy's new day care center has all kinds of new ideas to try and new foods for her to eat. We are excited to have any help we can in expanding Lucy's palate!
Here is our little peanut enjoying a cracker.
Yum!
