Perfect baby....except for feeding

Our two therapists, the speech language pathologist (SLP) and the physical therapist (PT) came this week. They were both quite impressed with our little man. He's doing quite a few things right. All that talking and making shapes with his mouth are great things for the precursors to speech. He is very active, waving hands, kicking feet, and pulling his feet to his chest. Toys are becoming much more interesting, he can spend quite a few minutes waving things around and/or staring at them. He has very good head control; it's not completely there, but he can hold it up for awhile on his own. This also means that tummy time is going a little better. Rolling over is just over the horizon. While changing diapers, he manages to almost roll from back to front, and with a little positioning and push from his PT, he did roll from tummy to back, so we're almost there. It's a good thing we're trying to get him off the feeding pump. Imagining him rolling onto his belly while hooked up and dislodging things would keep me up at night.

Bottle feeding has pretty much plateaued. This is both good and bad. It's good because the reason seems to be that his suck reflex has become integrated, meaning it is under conscious control now. This is an important developmental step. It's bad, because it means that now he is CHOOSING to only take the 30mL or so from the bottle. All of us are in agreement that bottle feeding is not a mountain we are going to climb to the top. We're looking forward to spoon feeding in about a month. The SLP said that spoon feeding is like the Promised Land for many kids. She has several patients that would take nothing or almost nothing from the bottle, but took to spoon feeding really well and need either no additional calories or just a quick bolus of Pediasure through the tube. It's very encouraging to hear. So PT and SLP are working together to get him ready for the next adventure. We'll be working even more on his abdominals and sitting up (with help). We'll get a recommended high chair and make sure it will give him enough support that all he has to worry about is what his mouth is doing and not about how hard it is to stay upright. We want to set him up for success in this so he will do well and not get frustrated and do half measure like he does with the bottle.