New Toys & changes

Peanugga has a new toy........she now has an exersaucer that she absolutely loves!!!  It's the first toy we've had for her that has not needed to be modified so she can fit in it properly.  It is helping to build leg strength cause she loves to jump up and down now and it's amazing for her toy interaction.  She is soooooo fascinated by the toys on it.  There's mirrors and spinning toys and lots for her to chew on.  We are very grateful to the friend who brought it to us.  Thank you.....

So she's back to gaining weight too.  She was 13lbs 7.5 ounces last week and we're hoping for more this week.  The GI doctor was very happy with her gaining about 2 ounces every 10 days or so.  Hopefully we'll be on a steady gain for a while now. 

The feeding/speech therapist brought up some questions for us to ask the doctor at Madilyn's 18month check-up the end of this month.  The roof of Madilyn's mouth appears to be an incomplete closed cleft palate.  It is really high with a narrow higher section in the middle.  The therapist thinks this may be some of the problems with the feeding.  She thinks it makes it difficult for her to suck and that it's extremely sensitive to temperature changes.  So we'll start with the pediatrician and go from there with those questions and see what we come up with.

We are also attempting to use a bottle again.  Milwaukee told us in February that we could stop fighting to get her to use the bottle, at the time we thought that was awesome news, however, getting her to use a cup is proving to be quite challenging so we are trying a bottle and several types of cups to see what works.  Even if it is the bottle she chooses at least she's taking liquids by mouth  through something other than a spoon.  Our theory is "whatever works", 10 ml by bottle is better than nothing but the tube so we'll try it.  Most of the things we do are trial and error and tons of persistence.   The feeding therapist has us trying things a minimum of 10 times before we are able to say that Madilyn doesn't like it, sometimes even longer.......it has taught me patience, patience, patience.........