Ian's Psychologist

It still strikes me as weird that my 16 month old son is seeing a psychologist. He's the head of the feeding team at Hershey. He met with us for almost 2 hours, and amazingly when he filled out the sheet he only billed for 60 minutes. I thought that was impressive. He said the majority of the children he sees have reflux. Of course some of the children he sees have never swallowed anything at all, they have been only fed by tube. The plan we are to implement is to feed him 6 times a day. These are the only times he can have any milk during the day. If he wants something to drink at another time, he can only have water. I am to let him have a little milk (maybe 1 ounce) and then am to give him bites of food by spoon. After he's eaten a few bites, his reward is to get a little bit of milk. He's allowed up to 4 ounces of milk during the entire feeding. I am to set a timer and if he refuses to eat, he still has to sit there (even if he's screaming or throwing up) for 10 minutes. The feeding session doesn't end until the timer goes off. I am to alternate bites between three different foods: pudding or yogurt, fruit, and vegetables. He is supposed to eat all 3 types of food at every feeding. I am to try to offer as wide a variety as possible in terms of kinds of yogurt, pudding, vegetables, and fruit.

He said that gradually we will later work on his texture issues. For now he said I can do things like mix a little bit of "regular" applesauce (i.e. the stuff you buy for adults in a jar) with baby food. Eventually he wants me to buy a "magic bullet" and use that to puree what I serve the rest of us for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This means I'll need to start cooking with Ian's egg allergy in mind. Whole wheat pasta here we come. A woman at church told me that Dr. Williams sometimes comes up our way. Why didn't anyone tell me this earlier? I asked him about it, and we'll be able to see him up here (25 minutes north of our house versus 105 minutes south of our house) on May 17. The only glitches with that date are #1 we may not have the pathology results back yet from the endoscopy being conducted on May 11th and #2 I had planned to travel to MD with Paul on May 16th as he's attending a conference in Baltimore that week. Maybe he can ride down with someone else and come back with us if we head to my parents the day after he heads down. Karen, Ian's OT, was with us today, and she'll be coming to his next appointment as well. She'll be back to our house next week (she didn't come last week due to Ian's upper GI or this week due to today's appointment).