Since starting Catherine on her reduced calorie diet a week ago, we have seen her progress sort of plateau. This is not a bad thing, but it's what I expected. When she was hungry, she ate more. When she's not so hungry, she eats less. Makes sense to me, I think she's pretty smart! A couple of things to take note of though...
The other night, she crawled up to me and signed "eat", so I brought her into the kitchen and put some cheerios in front of her and she put about 2-3 in there at once! Total she had around 4-5 cheerios. This is huge. She knows what the sign means and used it appropriately!
Today I sat down with her and ate a snack. She grabbed a Veggie Stick from me and tasted it...still doesn't like them. So, I finished the bag for her. She did eat a cheerio I offered her. Up until this point, when I say that Catherine "ate" something, it means that she put some food in her mouth (or let me) and let it sit between her tongue and her bottom teeth. She lets it sit there until it dissolves or it dribbles out (sorry if this is too much info...). But today she was actually moving that cheerio around and it was gone in less than a minute! I was excited! I know she has the skills to eat, but I know it will take some time for everything to come together.
She has actually gained back a pound of the weight she lost during the big drop in calories since being on the reduced calorie diet. (Don't want to be her! ha!) Seriously though, I always thought she was overfed. Maybe she doesn't need to have the 850 cal/day she was getting before. It will be very interesting to see what her weight is next week at the doctor's and what he will want to do. I honestly don't think a whole lot of progress is going to happen unless she's hungrier than she is now, but we can't keep her on very little calories for a long time. We are still considering Kluge Institute in VA.
For those of you who don't know, Kluge is a rehabilitation center for children that has a tube weaning program. It's a 2 week intensive day program that is hunger based, meaning they let the kids get hungry so they have an internal motivation to eat. There are also therapies geared to each child to help address any other issues that come into play. It's very gentle and there is no force feeding. Believe it or not, some places do that. They have quite a bit of experience doing this and a pretty good success rate. I think their main objective for a child Catherine's age would be to get the weaning process started and have it continue at home. If we decide to go this route and she is approved, it would happen sometime this summer, as there is a waiting list.
Thank you all for your prayers. We pray for all of you!
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