Barium

We had a step forward with Evey this week, she passed her swallow study. How that works is they give Evey barium mixed formula and they do a continuous X-ray and see if she's still aspirating into her lungs while she's swallowing. It's pretty much the coolest thing ever to watch. Good news is she isn't aspirating anymore and we can go ahead and try to start to feed orally again. It's kind of a double edge sword because now there's the hope she'll start to suck on a bottle, because she finally can. Bad news is so far she has no sucking reflex with the bottle anymore. So we are just letting the formula dribble into her mouth while half comes out and half she swallows down. This is going to be quite the process, but I guess they don't call it speech "therapy" for nothing. I remember staying up nights when Owen was in the nicu crying while pumping desperate to be able to breastfeed him - little did I know. Now we just hope and pray little Eves figures out how to eat eventually. Thanks to modern medicine she won't starve to death because of her glorious "gangsta" tube. Thank you 2012.