No More Soft Sipp!

Here's a picture of Em from yesterday. That little outfit is supposed to snap at the bottom, but she's too chubby and it kept unsnapping. Ah well. It's still cute.

Well, we finally did it. We got rid of the soft sipp post op feeder for good. Emily had been drinking milk from these bottles since her lip surgery in October 2004. She initially refused them and we'd had to re-hospitalize her for dehydration. We force fed her for about two days, which was agony, and then she just accepted them.

After the three week post-op period was over (from lip surgery), she continued to use them and absolutely refused her Pigeon bottles. We didn't have the heart to force feed her again so we stuck with the soft sipps until her palate surgery last month. We'd ordered about eight more of the bottles back in October and we were still using them as of YESTERDAY. But they had begun to fall apart. They are not really for long term use.

This is such big news because it really is huge step for Emily towards normalcy. The soft sipp bottles were always a reminder that something was wrong. People always stared at them when we used them. They also only hold about 3.5 ounces and we were forever refilling them. What's she drinking from now? She's using a Gerber Soft Starter cup without the valve now. I think she is able to get some suction, but when we put the valve in she gets extremely frustrated. Overall, the transition to the cup was surprisingly painless. We'd been using the Gerber cups at meal times anyway (for juice) and so she was already familiar with it. This past Saturday she wanted her soft sipp and got pretty cranky, but after her second nap I put her at the table and gave her some gouda cheese, which makes her very thirsty. She glugged the milk from the cup and we haven't looked back since! I'm so proud of her.