Today was exciting because we had our first speech therapy appointment.

The therapist and I talked mostly about strategies and small ideas to work on with Ella. With speech therapy, we let Ella lead the show. If she doesn’t like something, the speech therapist takes the opportunity to teach Ella how to tell us that she doesn’t want it. It is all centered around Ella’s motivation and what she wants and getting her to express those likes and dislikes. Now that I understand more about the approach, I don’t think Ella is going to mind speech therapy at all…since she gets to call the shots! Since Ella doesn’t know the speech therapist yet, I had to hold Ella during the session, so I was not able to snap any pictures. But we should have some in the upcoming weeks.

Since we have to go to the doctor tomorrow, we also had OT this afternoon. This went well too. We didn’t have any fussing from Ella. She was very tolerant of the various activities and exercises from the OT.

And we are so excited that she is using other objects in her mouth for teething. We’ve always tried to introduce them but she has never been willing to take anything else. So today included her toes but also a regular teething toy! Yeah!

We’re gearing up for our big day at the hospital tomorrow. Ella will likely have to get up earlier than normal so we can show up on time. We hope that we get the answers that we are looking for!