Last Day: Adding new foods, Learning, and What I Did Not Expect

Sessions:

AM:The morning sessions went very well. ZZ took over 4 oz in each (combined food and drinks.) He had a very short stand-off during the second session where he just hung his head and sighed before taking his bite.
PM: The psychologist decided to throw in an extra food into our session this afternoon to make a "meal" for ZZ. The initial food was a chicken something I had given ZZ before with success. The second food was either green beans or peas. It's hard to tell when they are pureed. I'll call it peas. I was supposed to go back and forth 2 bites each while going through the stages (dip, quarter bite, half bite, then fulls) on each food throwing in the drinks every 3rd bite as usual. So he took the chicken dip and quarter bite and the peas dip. Then he took his drink but no way was he taking anymore of the peas. So my last session of the last day was a "learning" session. ZZ pulled out all his usual refusals while I delightedly exclaimed over the Strawberry Shortcake DVD, LiteBrite and toy laptop between offering the bite in my firm monotone voice. ZZ finally decided that green stuff was most entertaining flying across the room so he worked diligently to hit my hand and spoon as much as possible. I was soon covered with green peas. As an aside the reason this was my last session is that I needed to go straight to the airport after this first afternoon session to catch a flight in order to make it to my grandma's 90th birthday celebration. I was not too happy about wearing pea splattered clothes on the plane. I did tell ZZ he had a timeout for hitting but now that I remember that, I realize I never had him take the time out. I'm so fired and ZZ never took that bite!

After the session the psychologist explained that she hadn't purposely set me up for a stnad-off but just wanted me to learn how to do 2 foods at once since he had been progressing so well. She thought 2 familiar foods would go well. I told her that as far as my feedings went this was ZZs first time eating peas (or not eating peas I mean). Although he had taken them in ST. "Ahh..., she said, "Well then that's how you introduce a new food. You pair it with an accepted one and give 2 bites of the accepted food to each bite of the new, with the usual progression on bite sized and a drink every 3 bites. So...had I been doing this in a "new food" order I would at least have put off the stnad-off by going back to the chicken for another round.

Why I call this a learning session:
As part of many discharge papers, I received a protocol document from the psychologist on it she says,

"It is extremely important that you learn how to follow the protocol when ZZ is eating poorly. From this perspective, "bad meals" - meals during which he refuses for long periods and eats very little - are actually amazingly important. You do not learn anything when ZZ eats well. If he ate well all of the time you would not have sacrificed so much to come here! You learn things when he refuses to eat. So, as strange as it sounds, we need him to refuse often so you have many, many opportunities to learn."

With that in mind I feel well-educated from my experience at ZZ's eating school.

What I did not expect: I did not expect this experience to be just a beginning. One of the other mom's put it best: this is only the first hundred steps on a very long path. I envisioned ZZ happily eating at our dinner table, maybe pureed foods, but there. I expected his tube feeds to be reduced substantially or on the verge of reduction. Instead I will carry on with his feedings 20 minutes 4 times a day interspersed with a speech therapy session and an extra 5th feeding in the evenings. Before this experience if someone had explained to me this way of teaching ZZ to eat, if I was told to hold the spoon through tears, hitting, vomit and even endearing behaviors meant to entice me to praise and take away that spoon, I would have thought and said that it was not possible and not a method I could follow. That is why I needed to experience it. I needed to work through all of the refusals. I needed to see him eat, to know it worked, so that I am willing to carry on with something I would have thought too hard. Sometimes we have to do hard things. Sometimes our children have to do hard things. ZZ has to learn to eat. It's a hard thing. We've only come the first hundred steps.