WOO HOO!!! MAX PASSES TEST!

Yesterday we drove to Children's for a swallow study by a speech pathologist. And drum roll please....HE PASSED!!!

Ok, it was by no means perfect...far from it. But he is showing that he can swallow (AWESOME!), it just requires a lot of work and time. Because he has not fed by mouth before, he is very, very uncoordinated with his swallow but it does eventually happen.

They want me to move forward with what I am doing (yay for mommy's instinct!!!) and really put a lot of emphasis on trying all different kinds of textures and tastes many times a day. We still are only going to do small amounts but working up to bigger amounts (like half a baby spoonful), knowing that at times he may aspirate a little. But she said to make progress we have to take this chance. I am going to run this by the pulmonogist just to make certain though...we must protect those fragile lungs!

How exciting is this!?! I am sooo happy, but I'll admit that I am a bit nervous to move ahead because I don't want him to have any respiratory setbacks. But heck, we are making great progress!

And this morning I pulled out a bin of all of his baby bibs...we finally get to try and use some!!! WOO HOO!!! :) I had put them all away because I would get so sad seeing them in his closet...we had no idea if he would ever be able to eat by mouth.

Here are two fun photos!

The speech pathologist and I were talking beforehand about our love of scrapbooking. So before we started the study, she said wait, let's take a photo of this...it would make a great scrapbook page! How thoughtful!

See him in the little chair? He's looking all around saying, what the heck am I doing here? The machine on the right is what monitored his every move during the study. We could see each and every muscle, bone and movement...it was fascinating!!!

And no that is not a funky dress I am wearing, it is a protection gown from the xray machine...felt like old times when I wore one practically every day in the hospital with all of Max's tests!

This is "post study" with the infamous barium ALL over his face! What a sight!!! They kept telling me to give him more and more and he wasn't used to having that much in his mouth so he kept drooling! I was probably more nervous than he was!