30 Days of Thanksgiving: Day 9

It's been several months since Eli has had any food orally. Sometime in the spring, he began choking and gagging on his bottled formula. Fearing he'd aspirate, we stopped feeding him orally until after his heart cath in June. Shortly after, we tried again. Only to have him still choke. We had a swallow study done and saw an Ear, Nose, Throat specialist to make sure everything was okay. Since Eli has a mid-line defect, we needed to be sure his swallow, tongue, tonsils and throat were not affected. Everything came back normal, telling us all of Eli's swallow issues can be overcome with some therapy.
First step: getting used to food. The texture. The taste. His occupational therapist recommended we start with some pureed sweet potatoes on the tray. Tonight we experimented with that. We gave him a spoon and a dallop of potatoes. He immediately stuck his finger in them and took it straight to his mouth. "mmmmm!!!" he says! It was fun to watch him smear the potatoes, lick his fingers, put some on the spoon, lick the spoon. He obviously does not have an aversion to food. This is huge! It's a major obstacle we won't have to overcome.
And that's exactly what I'm thankful for. I'm thankful Eli likes food. I'm thankful he doesn't mind having things in his mouth. I'm thankful for the first step of getting him to take in some nutrition orally.

Also: Be sure to look back to Day 3. I added a picture of Samuel!