MFB Therapy yesterday

Yesterday at Jordan's MFB therapy they started by weighing her. They were excited she gained weight!! .4 kilograms - what did that mean?? After coming home and bringing up my online conversion calculator, I found out that it was about 14 ounces! Wow - just under a pound in 2 weeks! I have been amazed at how much she is eating at some meals! I also think that by weaning her, we are now able to track the exact amount of formula she is getting per feeding. She actually took 5 oz the other day at a feeding! In the past, when giving a bottle, she would almost always take around 2 oz. Now, she almost always takes around 4 oz in a bottle. As hard as it was to wean her (I cried before, during and after her last nursing), I know it was the right thing to do.

This week during therapy they helped me determine what type of bottle I should be using with her and how to hold her. I brought along 4 different bottles we had at our house (3 of them were from Conner) and they immediately ruled out the one I had bought for Jordan because they didn't like the shape of the nipple and the location of the hole. The liked one of the Playtex ones the best because it had a short nipple and a wide base giving her a good area to create suction. They also want me to stick with the stage 1 nipples because she drinks too fast from the stage 2 ones and can't control her swallowing making it likely for her to aspirate.

I started feeding her and the therapist, Linda tried to listen to her swallowing with a stethoscope, but Jordan was too interested in it. She kept grabbing it and playing with it and stopped drinking. Finally, Linda just tried to sit there and see if she could hear anything. There wasn't anything significant, but she encouraged me to hold her more upright so she had to control the swallowing rather than just letting it go down on it's own. Jordan wasn't very interested because she had eaten a HUGE breakfast only 2 hours before and having an audience of 3 didn't help.

We moved her into the highchair for some purees. They had me feed her and talked with me about her tongue placement before putting the spoon in her mouth. The tongue should be forward and making a cup to hold the spoon/food. If she has it retracted in her mouth, I need to use the spoon to help push it into it's proper position before giving her the food. I also learned that I shouldn't pull the spoon out curving it upward to clean it off. I need to let Jordan's upper lip learn to do the work by pulling it straight out.

I have several things I have to do differently to feed Jordan and in the past day I have tried to change some things. It is interesting how much I have to think through everything I am doing with her now. With both Mak and Conner, I just fed them and didn't really have to think about anything. I have found myself just going through the motions of feeding her and forgetting to look for the tongue placement and pulling the spoon out straight. The therapy for Jordan is actually therapy for me!!!