Chocolate & Doritos

The sweet and the salty. The yin and the yang that make up Aaron and me. And the only two things Jonah would eat during his swallowing study on Tuesday. He hadn't eaten for 3 hours and literally wouldn't eat anything except chocolate and Doritos. That's my boy!


Most of you know Jonah is picky about his swallowing of food so we've taken him in to get tested, just to be sure there wasn't anything other than stubborness going on. He had an upper GI x ray last week where they strapped him immobile to a board with his elbows at his ears and made him drink barium to see if there's any obstruction. Super fun! Gratefully, everything looked normal.


This time around he got to sit up and have a picnic, eating food and taking x rays to see how his mouth and throat muscles worked together. The trickiest part was he had to eat barium in order to get the x rays. So we tried liquid barium in bottles of all varieties and sippy cups, apple juice and chocolate milk flavored barium, bread and cereal slathered with a dollop of barium and cookies with barium baked into them. It wasn't until we tried a chocolate & barium sandwich that we got him to actually swallow. And then we celebrated more success with the Dorito Barium Surprise. Basically 2 Doritos with chalk frosting smooshed in the between. Yummy.


And the results were that his "chewing is immature" and he has "delayed swallowing." Basically he doesn't chew his food well enough and then when he goes to swallow his throat muscles don't work in sync with his mouth. So the food can sit in his throat and he gets overwhelmed, so he chokes or he chooses just to spit it out before he gags. We still have to go back to the gastrointerologist to get the final say of all the test results but basically it's developmental and we have to move slowly with his diet and textures.

All is all, nothing serious, just delays in his eating development and we just try to stay patient and keep feeding him. Basically what we thought to begin with but its nice to know it's nothing more. I'll be interested to hear the final verdict from the Dr and if there is any "feeding therapy" where you go and have people feed you yummy stuff to practice your chewing. That's my kind of therapy!


Trying to keep the hungry Disaster entertained while we waited to go in to see the doctor. Even the camera couldn't keep his mind off of "bobbies" and daydreams of formula.