We spent our 6 weeks here getting feeding therapy for Evangeline at Children's Hospital, and counseling for mama! It has all been a huge success- I cannot really believe it. Evangeline has vastly improved. Her treatment consisted of giving her positive feeding experiences in order to help her unlearn her association between feeding and pain/discomfort. It worked. It took about a month to really extinguish the old behavior and replace it with the new learned association/behavior. Now the kicking and screaming is a distant memory :).
The biggest things we did to give her more positive experiences were to reduce the nipple flow to the slowest flow out there, which is Dr. Brown's preemie nipple- this helped her to feel a bit more in control. We also limited her feeding time to 30minutes (I was spending at least an hour). Additionally, whenever she started resisting or fighting the feed, we did not engage in the power battle, but just stopped. This was terrifying at first because she was not eating nearly enough (in terms of what the nutritionist said she needed), but the feeding therapist was focused on quality, not quantity (so scary and hard to trust she knew what she was doing!!). After about a week, she started picking up her ounces, growing again, and learning that feeding was maybe ok after all. After a month, she was feeding smoothly sometimes in only 15minutes! She went from doing 13-15oz/day to 20-24oz/day. Im so thankful for our feeding therapists at Children's!! I hope this can help other moms out here!
Im doing better too! Really for the first time, I have hope that we are going to make it through this. I have been working through some PTSD and PPD with my counselor and it has helped so much. At 6 months, I finally believe that Evangeline is okay (just tiny)- man, it took a lot to get here!
I still have infant twins, and so it is still hard, but much more manageable. The clouds are finally parting! Thank you for checking in and praying for us! Thank you to my parents for hosting us and making it all possible to get the help we needed!
Laura, thanks for sharing some light with us. I am so thrilled with all of the positive progress Evangeline has made!
ReplyDeleteThis is so wonderful to hear! So happy for you and your family! I will keep the prayers coming!
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad you all are doing better! Ps love E's hat ;)
ReplyDeleteThis is amazing news. Praise God that things have improved for Evangeline and for you, too. We are excited to have you back in Fort Worth. Much love!!! Em
ReplyDeletePraise God from whom all blessings flow! Glad you are able to tell you story and help others. God is good. Continuing to pray for you all!
ReplyDeleteIt's been a while since I've caught up with your beautiful family! Sounds like it has been stressful, but that you are now on the right track with Evangeline. As the mom of boy girl twins who are as different as night and day, I can relate to having a completely different experience with each child. You want them to coast along together, needing the same things, at the same time, knowing in your heart that it would be so much easier and less concerning. But as much as these gals are twins, they are still two separate people with different needs. Quite an adventure you are on--I pray for good health for Evangeline, and continued health for her sister. Praying for you too! Blessings :)
ReplyDeletePraise God! So wonderful to hear!
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