Schedules to keep

The Early Intervention people were here this morning. Last month they had given us a few things to work on. First, trying to get the gagging to stop and get Drew more interested in eating. Funny if you consider his size. With some suggestions from an occupational therapist we were able to complete that task. The second thing we were working on was strengthen his legs a little and making him more mobile. The boy will jump up and down like crazy in a jumparoo but won't really put any weight on his legs if you hold him up. Hes not behind the curve, but Lily is nearly walking so in comparison I think I'd like to see him a little stronger. We did all kinds of kneeling exercises and different positioning and toys to try to get him to stand a little bit here and there, holding onto things of course, and in a month he improved quite a bit. Hes still not the strongest guy on the block. Physically anyway :)

So they were here again this morning and we were talking about his improvements. The Developmental Specialist asked if he spent much time doing breathing treatments or airway clearance. Um, YEAH. Its like 2-3 hours per day. She made a great point -that 2-3 hours per day that he spends sitting in one place doing his treatments is time that Lily, for example, spends rolling around, playing with toys, exploring. And that put a big question on my list for Drew's docs. How can we better balance this? This is our current schedule (roughly):

7am - Wake Drew up to do his treatments

8am - Finish treatments, eat bottle, eat breakfast

9am - Nap

11am - Wake up, bottle.

12pm - Lunch

12:30 - Treatments

1pm - Nap

3pm - Wake up, bottle

5pm - Nap

6pm - Wake up, dinner

7pm - Treatments

8pm - Bottle, bed.

If you look closely, there is really only maybe 3 hours of awake time that is "free time" for Drew these days. Compare that to Lily who has more like 5 or 6 hours of free time. I'm not suggesting that all of the time we spend on treatments is impairing his other physical abilities, but there's gotta be balance, and more of it, I think. But breathing is more important that walking. He is only 9mo old, so I'm certain I'm jumping the gun here, but the talk got it into my head and I want to make sure that I'm balancing this all okay. And not even just his schedule, but everyones. I think I try pretty hard to split my time between all of the kids. The morning nap is only for the babies, so I have some good Ella time for that two hours. Then when everyone naps in the afternoon I can get a few things done around here. I try to keep the TV off for most of the day, but turn it on when Drew is doing his treatments so that we can all watch Sesame Street together. It minimizes some of the complaining from the girls when I have to sit by Drew for the 30-40 minutes his stuff takes.

We do whatever we need to to keep Drew happy and healthy, but a big part of that is keeping the whole family happy and healthy. We'll see if we can better weigh out what needs to happen to Drew each day and when against the fun stuff that also needs to happen.