Occupational Therapist

Karen, Ian's OT, came for the first time today. She'll be coming on Tuesday afternoons, weather permitting. I am hopeful that through her weekly advice plus whatever we learn through Ian's GI appt (scheduled for 2/24) that Ian will be consuming more than milk (and licking cheese curls) in the future. She really thinks that the GI doctor will find a physiological problem. We shall see. Her advice at this point is as follows:

1. Don't give Ian anything by spoon until his next OT appointment (Tues). Don't use the Nuk brush any more that was given by the feeding team.

2. Have him drink his bottles in the highchair (except for the one before bed) to try to have him change his attitude toward the highchair from negative to positive. I am to leave cheese curls and a spoon the tray while he's drinking his milk.

3. Give him a deep tissue rub (arms, legs, and back) with lotion after his baths.

4. Change his wet diapers while he's in a standing up position rather than lying down.

5. Do another deep tissue exercise (hard to describe in words) with his legs and arms 4-5 times a day.

6. Encourage him to put toys in his mouth, and if I find one that really fits well in his mouth then I am to try to keep that toy near him all day long.

7. If he keeps waking up every hour throughout the night (sleep has been an utter disaster lately) we are to use some white noise (ex. a radio playing a static sound all night) to see if that will help. Usually we can't let him cry because he'll throw up. We also haven't been feeding him because we don't want him to get used to being fed every hour throughout the night. So we've usually been rocking him, but lately he falls asleep immediately in either my arms or Paul's arms, but he will not sleep in the crib. Last night at 12:15am I decided to let him cry because it had been 4 hours since he'd been fed so I didn't think he'd gag. I put him on his back (so he wouldn't stand up), and we let him cry for more than an hour. It was torture for all of us (except Nadia, who slept through it all). He woke up one other time (4:30am) and didn't cry as long that time. He then slept until 7:45am, which is much later than usual which helped make up for the sleep he lost while crying. I really hope that he got the message that he needs to sleep by himself (not in our arms) and will go back to sleeping 10-11 hours straight like he was doing before.