Day 12 - Speech

As a parent sometimes I cringe thinking about the impact of what I am or am not doing right now on the future of my children.  Did I yell at her instead of maintaining my composure and start a cascade of therapy sessions to start when she's 14?  And then drilled into my head by the NICU staff is "she has to learn to breastfeed, it will be so important for her speech."

Little did I know. 

In my mind Eisley would have her heart surgery and gain boundless energy, start eating like a champ and onward life would go.  Ha Ha Ha!  Three out of four isn't bad.

So grew my frustration as we toiled day in and day out without much success.  A princess who appeared so fair and innocent, yet I became more and more discouraged as Eisley failed to nipple.  Simply pursing her lips or blowing raspberries of milk back to me, she did not want to do this!

It was a difficult day, revisiting with our speech pathologist from the NICU, to hear him say "her mouth is so disorganized, maybe we need to just forgo the bottle altogether and just work on solids."  It sounded good.  But was I quitting on my girl?  I don't give up or quit and don't let my kids do that either.  And what did this mean for her speech down the road?

I did some research.  Essentially, we're back to the hypotonia again - it's everywhere - even in Eisley's mouth!  So after consulting with the feeding clinic at Children's, we have a few tools to work with.  In short oral motor therapy.  Lots of chewing, gnawing and moving of those jaw and tongue muscles.  Some day, we'll get there.  For now Eisley really likes her squash and eats much better for the ladies at daycare than for Mommy.  In a few months we may start some official speech therapy, but Eisley's biggest cheerleaders will be home from school shortly.

The mamamamama, dadadadadad, bababababa babble princess is calling...