Speech and Eating!

With Bree's new schedule of eating it is easy to see why I feel like we are constantly feeding her, or thinking about feeding her, or preparing to feed her. Her schedule is as follows:

0630 - 15 cc water flush

0700 - 1 tbsp fruit with 2 cc's of canola oil (oil goes down her tube)

0730 - 70 cc's of formula (first 20 minutes try with bottle, whatever is not finished put down her tube at a rate of 15 cc's every 5 minutes)

1000 - 1 tbsp vegetable with 2 cc's of canola oil (oil goes down her tube)

1030 - 70 cc's of formula (first 20 minutes try with bottle, whatever is not finished put down her tube at a rate of 15 cc's every 5 minutes)

1300 - 1 tbsp fruit with 2 cc's of canola oil (oil goes down her tube)

1330 - 70 cc's of formula (first 20 minutes try with bottle, whatever is not finished put down her tube at a rate of 15 cc's every 5 minutes)

1600 - 1 tbsp vegetable with 2 cc's of canola oil (oil goes down her tube)

1630 - 70 cc's of formula (first 20 minutes try with bottle, whatever is not finished put down her tube at a rate of 15 cc's every 5 minutes)

1800 - Start nighttime drip of 29 cc's per hour for ten hours

Now you can see why I feel like I am so busy all the time. This on top of regular naps, baby stuff, and a toddler to chase around makes me feel crazy somedays! However, this is her schedule and so far she is doing great. Her biggest problem is her parents! We forget to do a flush here, and then sometimes she is late on one feed because we are out and about and then all the other ones get delayed. Regardless of our failures, she still smiles at us in her sweet way to let us know that she knows we are doing our best!

With speech therapy we are trying out some new things. Our goal with speech therapy is to try and get her drinkin out of a bottle. Our newest adventure in this is trying out a new bottle. It is traditonally called a Habermann bottle, and is used with kids who have problems sucking out of a bottle. (Click here to see it!) Basically, while she is eating you squeeze the elongated part of the nipple to assist her in getting out the formula. We have tried it a total of three times today. We had luck the first time, but no such luck afterwards. I am hoping it is going to take her a few days to get used to it.

Another new thing we are trying is by playing classic music while she is eating. This music must have a fast tempo so that she can pace herself along with it. So the new men in Bree's life are Bach, Bethoveen, and Mozart. She gets to hear them every three hours for 19.5 minutes at a time (at least that's what itunes tells me!)!

Bree has been showing great strides as of lately, and I hope that she continues to do so. Come to think of it, both of my girls are amazing! I love them with all my heart and more, and I wouldn't change one little thing about them. They do drive me crazy some days (more often than not as of lately) but they can always make me smile with just one little grin from them.

:)