A huge (and messy) step forward!

I wish this phone pic came in clearer!

Hannah has been making such quick and huge strides in terms of her eating issues recently.  Actually, it has been progressing over the past few weeks, but tonight was a huge leap forward.

We still have made very little progress in the feeding-by-spoon issue after all of these months.  She just almost refuses to let us feed her by spoon.  When she does “allow” it, it is always mixed with fruit, and it always has been a stage-2 texture.  If we tried a stage-3 texture, she would spit out the pieces immediately, cry, and sometimes throw a tantrum.

That being said…

In OT today, we progressed to full-size graham crackers and oreo straw sticks.  These were the same oreo straw sticks that she choked on pretty badly about 6 weeks ago.  She has easily mastered goldfish within just a week.   Her OT was beaming when she saw how easy Hannah is handling these foods.  Hannah seems to “learned the skills” needed to gum mashable foods!

Her OT and I were discussing the spoon issue, and she said that it is possible that Hannah is such a “control freak” that she won’t ever let us feed her by spoon.   She may go straight to feeding herself instead of us feeding her. 

So she wanted me to do a “test” tonight.   So I emptied a jar of stage-3 spaghetti and sauce into a baby bowl, and I put in on her high-chair tray.  I put a baby spoon, a baby fork, biter biscuit, and a air-wheel on the tray after I dipped them into the spaghetti bowl. 

Sure enough, she was totally into eating the stage-3 food, bits and all!  What was even more amazing is that on a few occasions, she even dipped her spoon and biter biscuit into the bowl of food to get more on it!  She TOTALLY understood the concept of using a utensil!!   For a half-hour or so, she totally got into it, eating all of the biter biscuit soaked with the spaghetti and sauce as well as playing with the utensils, etc. 

Bottom line, she can easily handle stage-3 foods!  As long as SHE puts it in her mouth.  And she is now beginning to understand the concept of using utensils because SHE took the initiative on three separate occasions to attempt to dunk what she was holding into the food bowl to get more. 

In the end, she ate about 1/3rd of a jar if you put it all together.  But for a first real attempt at a stage-3 meal, she did absolutely incredible.  Much, much better than we could have ever hoped!

So now we are starting to rethink this whole feeding issue.   Yes, we still have definite delays on feeding, but she is making amazing progress on this.  So much so that our OT wants us to try refried beans, mashed potatoes, and mushy rice next (as long as she feeds herself).  With two teeth, she is managing really well with her “toddler” finger foods.   Even though we are still going to continue to attempt feeding with a spoon, we are going to put less emphasis on pushing it, and if we have to keep with a bottle to get her nutrition in her in the meantime, then we will. 

We will just keep pushing forward with getting her to feed herself.   She is a control freak when it comes to feeding, for whatever reason.  But now that we know she can physically do it, we will just follow her lead and see what she will eat next!

My heart is just soaring tonight.