TTC76

Hi there.  I am sorry I missed your post.  It sounds like our LOs may have some different issues.  However, I think my LO may have been wrongly diagnosed for over a year so we may still have some parallels.  We had tongue thrust issues at 5 months but DS was never a gagger.  I think that is a whole different, and scary and frustrating, thing to deal with.  We also never had success with purees.  A lot of my story is in my bio, so that is a good place to start. I haven't updated it too recently, I don't think so here it the update.

Now that DS is eating, we are able to look back and see a lot we hadn't recognized.  For example, we had several feeding therapists between our hospital based feeding program and Early Intervention.  DS usually started strong, he responded well in the first 2-3 sessions and then gradually declined having anything near his mouth. We realize now that the therapists who really pushed him caused him to shut down.  He is very stubborn and would not respond.  It was actually our most recent therapist who mentioned that her exit notes would say that DS is stubborn and will push harder back than you will push him so whoever replaced her would have to follow his lead.  DH and I then discussed and realized that had happened with other therapists.

DS was continuously diagnosed in initial evaluations and six month evals as not having any texture or space aversions.  Our last therapist decided not to push eating but to instead work with textures.  She did things like a texture box, finger painting, hiding toys in a bowls of dry cereal, play doh, etc.  Food was always involved and encouraged but never pushed,  DS LOVED her.  He was excited every time she came over and would immediately want to go through her bag.  Well, within two months of her work, he started playing with food and putting it in his mouth.  In a year of therapy before her, he had done that on isolated fluke occassions.  Even once he started with putting food in his mouth, she continued working with textures, playing, getting dirty, etc.  I truly think that despite the fact that he would put anything non-food related in his mouth (like a tasty shoe!), he did have texture aversions and that was the issue that had to be addressed before we could have success with eating. 

What type of therapy is your LO in?  How do you feel about the therapist?  How are the aversions being handled?  What does your therapist think about the regression?  Could it be a teething issue?  Could it be a stubborn issue?  Have you seen an ENT or GI about the gagging?  Did they scope?  Is your therapist doing any texture therapy?  What do they have you doing at home?  All of this may help me tell you what worked for us, what didn't, what variations we may have done, etc.  I am more than happy to offer anything I can, I know how frustrating and scary this is.  Best of luck, I look forward to hearing from you!