Olivia Passed Her Swallow Study!

This past week we took Olivia back to Texas Children's to do another swallow function study, during which a speech pathologist watches Olivia swallowing using x-ray technology, to see whether she is aspirating (allowing any of the milk/food to go down the wrong pipe) at all. She has done several swallow studies since she was born and has always aspirated, which is why she has had to eat through the G-tube in her tummy since she was about a month old. Well, this time around we were really hopeful that she would do better, as she is just getting bigger, stronger and more coordinated every day, plus she has really seemed to love all the tiny little tastes of various foods that we've given her. So we were thrilled to see that she was able to swallow both baby food and thin liquids without aspirating even once! Everyone in that room was cheering for her! So what this means is that now we can start giving her small amounts of food by mouth every day, starting off with rice cereal for babies. Chad and I are having so much fun with this, and Olivia seems to be as well! Though it will be a very gradual process, eventually she should start taking more and more food by mouth and less and less by the G-tube, until hopefully all of her daily nutrition comes from food she eats by mouth. Below are some pictures of her recent experiences with rice cereal...messy, but we don't care!



This was really huge for us, and hopefully we get some more great news next week about her oxygen...please pray that Olivia's test goes well enough next week that she is able to come off the oxygen once and for all!