Annie was a busy girl yesterday–she was scheduled for four therapy sessions (including music therapy!), but she got to have an extra hour because one of the therapists had an opening and wanted to play with her! With five hours of therapy for Annie yesterday, you would have thought that it would have been a day of high productivity for me! Well, I walked to Target and spent $100 on various foods that require only a microwave or electric kettle to prepare, cold medicine, and vitamins (I’m fighting off a cold, though the prayers do seem to be working in that I haven’t totally succumbed), then talked to the doctor and nurse practitioner about Annie’s itchy stitches (she’s done with bacitracin and using hydrocortisone now) and attended her team conference, did some yoga stretches for my poor sore back (Annie seems light until you haul her around dozens of times a day), filled out the little girls’ paperwork for Heritage, and bought used copies of all the books Tommy will need for his modern history class next year (everything from Marx and Nietzche to Francis Schaeffer and Carl Trueman–those nerds are going to have a blast, and I might have to drop in occasionally!). In between her therapy sessions, Annie and I did another lesson of phonics and played Oh Snap! I had a brief phone date with a friend. I did our laundry. But I didn’t do any lesson planning or read any of the new stack of books Derek brought in for me on Sunday. I guess that’s still a productive day on floor 18 of Shirley Ryan AbilityLab!
She slept in until 5:30 this morning, which felt like a gift. All the hard work yesterday really must have worn her out–by dinnertime, she was weepy and fixating on a canker sore that the nurse practitioner couldn’t even see. All day yesterday, she refused to eat, so I’m really glad we left in the g-tube. The staff dietitian came to talk to me yesterday afternoon, and when I shared that I’m having some PTSD from all the feeding struggles of her early years with us, she gave me some woo-woo coping mechanisms and also was totally fine with me offering her the food and then filling her up with Nourish formula if she’s not eating enough by mouth.
I am trying her techniques this morning. Annie’s breakfast is bananas foster French toast and sausage links, something she should love. I gave her the option of eating her breakfast or just having the sausages and getting a tube feed of Nourish. She said she wanted the French toast. I made myself oatmeal. We took the following picture to show her sisters that she’s eating like a big girl. Then she changed her mind. I’m breathing deeply, holding my thumbs gently in my hands to tell my body it’s okay, looking slowly side-to-side to tell my hind brain that we are in a safe place and can calm down, and cheerfully giving her some time to think about her choices. I am reminding myself that I got over seven hours of sleep last night and that 5:30 CT is actually 6:30 ET, so I woke up this morning later than I would wake up at home. I am calm. I am serene. I am…praying for patience. Organic garbanzo bean and pomegrate juice-based g-tube formula, coming right up…
