feeding therapy

Today we went to a speech therapist in NJ that specializes in children with feeding difficulties. Nancy spent 2 hours working with Brie to evaluate and figure out new ways to feed her. She feels that a lot of her problems have to do with her suck. She basically does not suck on her bottle. We are going to work on some techniques at home to get her to develop a good sucking pattern so that she can effectively drink her bottle. We are also going to start working on more finger foods because Brie seems to really enjoy chewing on finger foods. Also Nancy suggested that Brie may not like baby foods. They do not have much taste to them and she seems to like things with alot of flavor. Today she ate cheese curls, pretzels, nutrigran bar, rice crispies and some other finger foods. She sat in the high chair for almost an hour letting me put them in her mouth. She also did some drinking from a straw and a cup. We are going to work on these items for the next two weeks. The pretzels and cheese curls are good because Brie actually sucks on them. Hopefully this will train her to suck better. We will see Nancy in another 2 weeks to evaluate her progress. Nancy also has another mother who she is going to contact that has a child with the same problem. Hopefully we can help each other through this rough time and get our little ones eating better. Over all it was a good visit.
Brie has actually been drinking her bottles better the last few days. She has taken on average 23 oz per day for the last 5 days. Today was not a good day for bottles, but she did eat alot of table foods in therapy and missed an entire bottle because of it. Hopefully she will start gaining weight again soon. She is so active that she burns so many calories. I am going to see if Nancy can suggest a pediatric nutritionist to help me with high nutrient foods and to see just how many calories Brie should be getting a day.