Chewy McNoSwallow

Ben had his initial evaluation with the speech therapist this afternoon, and it was both reassuring and a debacle.  Without seeing the results of the swallow study (scheduled in two weeks), she couldn't be sure why his eating and possibly speaking is delayed. However, she suspects that either his tongue and cheeks aren't strong enough or working in proper concert, or his jaws just aren't biting down hard enough. 

blue boy

The visit was reassuring because it seems like there are good exercises I can do with Ben that will help strengthen his tongue, cheeks, and jaws (all of which involve me sticking my finger in his mouth). Ben is not overly-fond of me doing this, so just getting him to open his mouth for me will be our first challenge, I think. The therapist showed me some ways to make opening up into a bit of a game, though, so I have hope. I'm supposed to do these exercises about 30 minutes twice a day. We'll see how that goes!

She also suggested I take a step back from doing table-food-only with Ben to doing purees and dissolvable foods like Baby Mum-Mums and Yogurt Drops. She showed me where to put them on the back of his gums and press down to encourage him to chew more efficiently. She also told me of two baby chew toys to buy that will help encourage him to bite down hard.

The debacle part of our visit was that Ben REFUSED to eat for her! Oh, and when he drank water from his sippy/straw cup, he didn't spill half of it out the side of his mouth the way he always does at home. Not that I wanted him to make a huge mess in her office, but I wanted to show her what he does normally. He had eaten almost 3 hours previously, but I guess he wasn't hungry enough (or possibly just weirded out by the lady with the blue plastic gloves trying to poke his mouth).

She thought he might have had more success drinking his water from a straw sippy cup there in the office because the water we filled it with was very cold & she said that coldness often will make ones cheeks draw together and lips tighten (thus improving the seal on his lips). Usually when we give him water at home in that cup it's semi-warm tap water.

Anyway, after a long, long time trying to cajole him to eat, he finally did put one piece of cheese in his mouth. Luckily, he did his normal "chew chew chew, spit out large chunks" thing for her. So I guess she got a small picture of how he eats. It was frustrating, though.

As far as working on his language development, we didn't have much time for that, but she did show me how to encourage him to make the "m" sound (by putting my thumb on his chin and gently pushing down then up. So now when he makes the "more" sign we're going to make him at least try to put his lips in the "m" position before we grant his voracious "more" desires.

Now I'm a bit apprehensive about the success of the swallow study. For that test he'll have to try to eat bits of food dunked in the barium solution.... so I need to think of something he'll definitely want to eat. Perhaps it's time for coooookies. Or something.

yard explorations with his birthday party duck

In other news, Ben and I have been enjoying the backyard a bit every day lately. He's gotten to the lovely stage where he doesn't try to eat each and every leaf and stick, so he can roam around our large backyard and get some fun exploring time in.

handing me a stick he found in the backyard