The day finally arrived!
The week was dragging like most weeks do when you’re anticipating a big day. I was eager to know if Taylor had improved on her swallowing. Shortly after we were brought to the X-ray room where Taylor was placed in a car seat like chair device and was strapped down a massive machine began to display an X-ray of Taylor’s swallowing.
The speech therapist and the radiologist were in the X-ray room with us and so began Taylor's second swallow study. Given how traumatized I had been the first time around, at that moment I was again terrified. Luckily for me that Max's mother had agreed to accompany me for that second test.
So in this room they did several swallowing exercises, first they handed me a spoon and a cup which contained a substance that mimicked that of twice the consistency of honey. "Okay, please go ahead and feed her." As I took the spoon and cup I felt strange and honestly had no idea what I was doing, but I began to feed Taylor who kept wanting to grab the spoon. Soon we were both covered with white cream all over us. It was everywhere, her nose, cheeks, chin, hands, legs, EVERYWHERE! She was enjoying it though!
As I listened to the doctors’ conversation I could pick up that Taylor was doing much better than last time. So, the tests continued and then they proceeded to feed Taylor the same substance (but only the consistency of honey) through a bottle.
Taylor began to swallow at first and it seemed to be going okay, my heart raced… But since Taylor appeared to be moving a lot the doctors seemed unsure. They then tried the test again with a more less consistency and that time Taylor began to aspirate so the testing stopped.
When I turned to the doctor he narrowed his eyes at me and asked, "Why are you crying? This is good news, isn’t it?" They were tears of joy, tears of relief, of course. I replied, "You have no idea
how good. I have been wanting for this day to come for so long!" I had, I really had; I’d actually dreamt of the day Taylor would be able to swallow and imagined how I would react, and as I’m sure you can already deduce, yes, I wept.
Soon thereafter we were in a room with the therapist and she began to explained how Taylor's new feeding would go. As we were talking another nurse came in stating the doctor needed to talk to her. During her absence I noticed that Taylor, who was sleeping, was breathing
differently and then suddenly she just stopped breathing altogether for a span of about five seconds! My heart sank and as I rushed to grab her Taylor then took a huge breath. Moments later when the therapist came in and I told her what had had happened she said, "That's what we want to talk to you about." The doctor replayed the X-ray video in slow motion and could clearly see Taylor was aspirating when she was being bottle fed. The doctor then said as a result of that we could not proceed with having Taylor be fed from a bottle.
So the therapist told us to continue feeding Taylor her usual twelve teaspoons of Stage 2 baby food twice daily, as this also a means for Taylor to get used to eating the consistency of baby food.
All things considered, I was pleased. All I asked of God that day was for Taylor to make an improvement and she did. She had made a
huge improvement. I am so very thankful and so very proud of my baby Taylor.
Continued.... until next week.
Thank you Maria Piork for helping edit. Please be sure to follow her at Marialovestowrite.blogspot.com.