Saturday, February 10, 2007

Pump Up the Volume!

Ben has been healthy for a few weeks and is doing well. He has pulled a few tricks the last couple of days, but when we stick to the protocol, he realizes quickly that we won't buy that anymore. It does crack me up a bit when I call to him and tell him to come for "sips and bites," and he hangs his head and slouches his shoulders, and shuffles slowly into our laundry room. We call that "loping." He strongly dislikes eating.
Some may wonder why he would be walking to the laundry room. We have tried feeding him in the kitchen while we are eating as a family, and he is not ready for that. He brings out his finest bag of tricks when we try to do both things at once, so we pull up a chair at the dinner table for him to sit on if he wants, but do all of his feedings in the laundry room. He is less likely to be distracted in there, and less likely to get attention for bad behavior. We keep his high chair in there and a chair for us, and a TV/DVD combo. We have a drawer full of his feeding therapy items. It is odd, but it works.
I have been able to increase his volumes this last week. He has been free of a cold or any other illness, which is premium time to make some serious headway. My record for the week is 10.5 oz. I am able to get atleast 9 oz. in on a regular basis. My babysitter and husband have a hard time getting the same results, but I think that will come as Ben gets used to taking more volume. I am feeling a bit more encouraged when I see progress being made like that. This whole eating thing is quite the rollercoaster, but I like being up on top right now.
One more thing about the laundry room...Ben's twin, Dan, loves to go into there when Ben is done eating. We have Ben sit in his high chair to digest a bit before getting out to run amuck. Dan calls it the "key pub," which being interpretted is "boy's club." The "boy's club" earned its name when we would walk by the laundry room to check on them, and they would wave goodbye, then shut the door so that we could not go in. The rest of us are officially uninvited. I think it is neat that Dan gets so excited about spending that time with Ben in their own boy's club, one of the joys of twins.

1 comment:

Matthew Patrick said...

Wow - seems like you are working hard to get that volume up and it is working! Well done mama... we are in a similar position with matthew - he can only eat in his highchair when there is nobody around and only a couple of toys -- otherwise distraction ruins everything... it seems like you have found the spot that Ben likes or at least accepts. So cute about teh twins in there LOL