He woke up dry!

This morning Ian woke up early (5:35 to be exact). I had gone to bed at 10pm, but I had trouble falling asleep at first (always an adjustment to a new bed). I couldn't let him cry (what I would have done at home) so I picked him up and tried to get him to fall back asleep in my arms in my bed. He slept on me until 6:30, but I didn't sleep a wink during that time. So I was rather tired when I got up at 6:30 because I had slept at most 6 hours total, and lately (while pregnant) I seem to need 9 hours on a typical night (sometimes more than that). I'm planning on hitting the hay by 8:30 tonight. When I got him undressed at 6:30, I was stunned to see his diaper was dry. I had noticed the day before it wasn't nearly as wet as usual, but this was the first time EVER he had stayed dry all night (10.5 hours). I immediately put him on the froggy potty, and he peed. Normally he is up for at least 90 minutes before he goes for the first time. This was significant progress in my mind! He didn't have any accidents today. I can't say the same about his sister who went #2 in her pants while we were at the playground this evening. I wasn't pleased about that, and it totally shocked me as it's been far more than a year since she did that!

We had no trouble making it to the feeding clinic by 8:30 since we had an early start. The kids were bummed that the playroom here at the Ronald McDonald House is locked at that time of day in the morning, and the tv in our bedroom doesn't get any kid friendly channels. We did watch a little on one of the tvs downstairs. They had me do Ian's first feeding. They videotaped it. He SCREAMED the whole time and tried to bat the spoon away with his hands etc. because they gave me rather thick baby (rice) cereal to feed him. Kathy (therapist) said I did a good job. If you say so. It felt like a disaster although I did get him to take quite a few bites in between drinking from his sippy. Kathy did the other five feedings today. He was going to be fed a sixth time, but he fell asleep in his highchair at the end of the 5th feeding (at 4:00pm). They decided he had been through enough for one day. Each of their feeding sessions lasts 15 minutes. Ian presses the timer at the start and end of the session. She was giving him about 20 bites per session. The first feeding session with Kathy he screamed for her also, but then he did pretty well during the last four feeding sessions, in part because I brought back some coconut milk yogurt during lunch, and she switched to feeding him that instead of more rice cereal. The big thing she worked on today was teaching him to drink from a regular cup. She had him drinking from a medicine cup today. At first most was running out of his mouth, but by the end of the day he was starting to figure out what to do with his tongue. She said learning these oral motor skills will help with his feeding, and it also will make it much easier to drastically cut back on how much he drinks at each meal because he can suck the milk down VERY quickly in the sippy cup. Tomorrow she'll start working on more texture and a wider variety of foods. I asked her if it was possible that Ian would make as much progress as the other little boy who is here this week (it's his last, a girl will be starting next Monday). Kathy said there was no way Ian would be to that point in four weeks. Bummer.

Did you know it's exhausting to spend 8.5 hours in a doctor's office? Well it was only 7.5 hours today since they let us out early, and that was already totally exhausting. I was almost in tears part way through the day as I couldn't picture doing this for 19 more days. The biggest problem is the way they have the clinic set up. It's too hard to explain right now as I want to go to bed in a few minutes, but basically they don't have doors in the areas where they have toys for the kids to play, and one of my kids can run to another play area, and then I can't see them both. I was in a panic most of the day of losing one of my kids. There are a lot of staff working in the feeding clinic, which is a help, but there are other people coming and going. It's NOT a secured room. I was sharing this concern of mine with Gwen at dinner, and she told me that I was right to be worried  because two weeks ago the staff said they'd watch a boy while the mom ran downstairs for an errand, and they didn't keep a good watch and the boy managed to leave the clinic and go down the elevator by himself. They found him because he set off the alarm in the elevator. Now I'm even more worried after hearing that story. There were many times in the day I was asking perfect strangers (people there for a one hour outpatient appointment) if they had seen a little girl with blonde hair. At this rate I am going to age several years in the next few weeks.

It's also very difficult here at the Ronald McDonald House in this regard. For example, there is no way to lock the bedroom door from the inside in such a way that the kids can't open it. Both kids can easily open the handle to the door to leave our room, and turning the handle unlocks the door. We need a chain across it or something like many hotel rooms have. I put a large chair in front of the door before putting the kids to bed tonight. Hopefully that will work. It's just tiring to be a single parent the whole day for 5 days straight. I've only done it one day, and I'm pooped. It's much harder to do it in a foreign environment, especially with Ian's propensity to just dart away from me. I'm in the kitchen trying to pour Nadia a glass of milk, and Ian runs off and I'm trying to chase him down before he gets too far away (once he was removing cones from an area where they had just laid new tile). I can't wait to be home, but hopefully he's going to make LOTS of progress this week, and I'll be so glad we went through this experience. I'd ask that in addition to praying for his progress, you pray for their safety and my sanity as I feel like a wreck after day one. Time to go to bed. I'm hoping that more sleep tonight will make the next 19 days seem more feasible. Right now I think I'm in over my head.