Day 11: Drinking Cartons

"Wipe-out Whitney" did not wipe out today! Mealtimes weren't perfect by any meals but her food and drink volume seem to be increasing.  She didn't complain about her cheek at all today and we mostly focused on her drinking skills. She ended up drinking 28 oz total today! That's 3 1/2 (8oz) cartons of liquid supplement! 

I can't believe we are more than half way done with this inpatient intensive feeding program! 

Breakfast was interesting, I didn't offer her most of the food we got her and just focused on drinking and the crunching. Whitney drank 4 oz of boost kids essential chocolate and ate a tablespoon of Rice crispies! I had ordered her a grape juice but she says she wants hot chocolate like me in the mornings so I switched it out for a chocolate BKE I had in the fridge! 

Whitney then ate 4 teddy Graham's and 3 oz of the grape juice for snack time. It's not much but I'm still trying to be consistent with our rules and rewards.  As you can see this was pretty much how she felt about our snack time this morning.  But she perked up when she found out she could go to the play room afterwards! 

Photos of the day: my newborn Cameron almost 2 years ago now! 

For lunch we started out with a hamburger, which she took some good bites on her side teeth and ate about a teaspoon of it! Sometimes it's difficult to measure how much food she eats.  We worked on peas again by having her smash them in the shape of a W on a piece of paper and telling her to lick them before she could smash them!  Eventually she ate two green peas. In between all this we were giving her drinks of strawberry BKE and also rewarding her with the drinking because she likes it! Whitney drank a total of 7 oz!! I didn't believe it at first! 

Whitney seemed to have more energy and did so good for lunch that we went to see turtle talk again! It's totally cute watching her talk to Crush! She was saying something about the Orange Car (the color of the jeep we drive) and Crush was like oh is that a true or false question!? I'm going to guess true! And Whitney's like yeah! 

She didn't want to go outside but to the play room to make a craft. So we went and colored bookmarks. Then I was reminded to fill out her menu for tomorrow, I was having so much fun that I actually forgot for the first time.  So I left her there to play games with the awesome volunteers. 

Then it was time for afternoon snack at 3:15pm. Whitney was hungry and ate a little strawberry, apple cinnamon muffin, six Cheerios, and drank 4 1/2 oz of vanilla BKE! I'm getting good at redirecting her and trying to keep her focused and engaged in the food while also still having fun and staying positive about everything she is doing.  I didn't even have to pull out any books or games. Afterwards she watched Cat in the Hat shows but she was more interested in lining up her stuffed animals. 

For dinner we had a new food, Alfredo spaghetti. Well she had spaghetti before but with the red sauce not the white. So she enjoyed licking the sauce and got to do 5 licks in between drinking. Whitney drank a total of 7 1/2 oz!! Can you believe it!? That's almost the whole carton of milk! I almost cried with joy! Although I was still scared that she would throw up! I was just waiting for it to come back out but it didn't! 

I'm not expecting her to do that every time of course. But now we know she can and she is amazing. I'm glad we focused on drinking today. It seems to be a lot easier for her because she gets pretty worn out after chewing and getting motivated to eat solids. Whitney still gets most of her calories from liquid supplements but we are still working on solids every meal. 

We got to go outside and see the red balls light up and sort of watch the sun set. When we went back inside, I went down the wrong hall and we got nervous so we held hands and ran out a there. Whitney was smiling the whole time pretending that we were scared! Then we ran down the right hallway and almost into a huge cleaning machine that a man was pushing along. I gasped because it really did startle me (if you know me you know that I scream or gasp loudly, a lot).  Then we walked nicely by the security guard and said hello. And then we ran down the hall way to the elevators still pretending we were scared! We were safe back in our room. 

I only got Whitney to drink 2 oz of drink before bed time. She was laughing a lot still and stayed up till 8:30pm and we both fell asleep! I woke up later to blog late now. 

Can you see her on the far end of her bed?

I wanted to post some of the super helpful handouts about methods we use here with Whitney.  Positive reinforcement  is never about punishment, especially associated with meal times. We don't say she doesn't get to do something during the meal but at the end it's her choice if she wants to comply with the expectations or not.  Whitney also responds well to verbal praises like "good job, you're almost there/done, keep going, you can do it I know you can." And physical rewards like high fives and hugs and sensory input like joint compressions and facial stimulation. Then there's the steps to eating. Example the peas today, she's eaten them before but to day we had to start with having Whitney tolerate them, by holding and then smashing them. The we got her to lick them and kiss them. And using the positive reinforcements and if then's, she ate two peas and that was as far as we wanted to push her and challenge her. It's a lot of work to stick with this and I'm not perfect at it that's for sure! Whitney's first few years were spent on the first steps of eating. Remember that every child is different and even every family so I'm not trying to compare us and our situations and experiences with anyone else. Thank you again for all the prayers and support on our behalf. We truly appreciate them and are so grateful for our family and friends and team of specialists here at camp CHOC. 

Weight: 15.1kg 

She lost 100g but that's because we took 100ml's away from her night drip last night. But she totally made up for it by the end of the day with all her drinking! Yesterday ( wed.) she consumed about 550 calories by mouth! I'm loving this progress and hard work!