Soup

A nine year old boy sitting down to eat a bowl of minestrone-type soup isn't an extraordinary thing for most households. For us, it is a pinnacle of success after a long, hard fought journey.

The journey began at birth. Matt had difficulty drinking from a bottle. The nurses in the NICU found a type of nipple that basically caused the milk to flow into his mouth with little effort on his part. He started with tiny amounts in the bottle which he slowly learned to drink without choking. As he grasped the drink without choking skill, they were able to put an ounce and then two ounces in at a time.

We attempted breastfeeding for a number of weeks, but it just never worked. At the time we did not have a complete picture of all of the challenges Matt had with motor planning. But it was clear that breastfeeding wasn't going to be in the picture for him.

It took a while, but Matt slowly worked up from a no-effort nipple to more standard ones that he had to work to get a drink. Who knew that having to coordinate all of those mouth muscles to eat was so important for muscle development beyond just eating but for speaking in the future!

Matt did surprisingly well with the beginning solids (basically just liquid rice cereal) but really struggled with true solids. I'll never forget him working with Sally and literally choking down tiny cubes of mango. She taught us how to help him learn to use his mouth to eat. We became proficient at dealing with him gagging and choking - slapping him on the back to dislodge a stuck piece of food or sticking our fingers into his mouth/throat to retrieve what he was choking on or ripping him out of the high chair, turning him upside down, dislodging whatever and returning him to his chair and trying again.

Amazingly, almost choking didn't seem to put Matt off of his food. He'd happily put the next bit of food into his mouth moments after choking. Which was a good thing as it happen every time at the beginning.

Once he was able to handle soft foods like mangoes and bananas, we had other challenges to overcome (beyond having him learn how to eat crunchier foods like raw carrots - which was a challenge on its own!). He wasn't able to feel how much food was in his mouth, therefore he would over stuff it and gag. He also had a high gag reflects so he would easily gag (from food, coughing, anything!) and end up losing the contents of his stomach. (He didn't lose that high gag reflects for years.)

Sally and the early childhood development school had a number of tricks and tools to help him overcome those issues. Before eating, we would ice his mouth (to bring more awareness to it) and throughout the day we would have him chew on all sorts of different things - knobbly things, vibrating things, tube things, and more (I am sure that all of these tools have official names - but knobbly thing works, right?!!).

We would all try to keep an eye on him constantly while he was eating - to get him to slow down and not to over stuff his mouth. Even with constant valiance, he'd still manage to over stuff it on regular basis - causing himself to gag and often lose the contents of his stomach (fun, fun, fun).

Over the years he made progress. Around six or seven, his high gag reflect lessened (I think he'll always have a hair trigger response - but it is sooo much better!!). To this day he'll still cram his mouth overly full, but he is getting much better.

Next challenge was the same that all kids have - how to use a fork and spoon (LOL - we'll work on cutting and knives at some point in the future!). It has taken years, but Matt has conquered using silverware to get the food from his bowl/plate to his mouth. He's learned to hold his fork and spoon level when bringing it to him - so as not to slip everything everywhere! Just this year he start to eat bowls of cereal with milk in them (he had a hard time coordinating liquids and solids on his spoon at the same time and working out how to eat the solid and liquid at the same type without choking - but he's enjoyed eating dry cereal for years!).

Just this week he sat down to his first bowl of minestrone type soup (that liquid and solid on the spoon at the same time issue) and ate it like a champ (not saying there wasn't a bit of a mess - but we'll take a messy success any day!!).

Matt has experienced all sorts of triumphs since he began his journey. This week's triumph was eating a bowl of soup. Who knows what next week's triumph will be!