Out of Solitary

Kenzie's isolation restrictions were lifted the morning... WOOHOO! She is 100% better and we were all getting cabin fever in this room. It means we can roam about free again and have Kenzies therapies in the regular room that has an observation window.

What we have seen is that Kenzie does MUCh better in her feeding sessions when they are not in our room. Here we think she freaks out because we have to leave her with strangers as opposed to downstairs they take her to a new environment.

Today we had a new feeder and Kenzie did really well! Again it was carrots on her Nuk brush. For those who want to know what a Nuk is... that's what the picture is of above. Kenzie gets two, 5 bite sessions. What that means is that the feeder says "kenzie 1, 2, 3, enter" and puts the nuk with the carrots in kenzies mouth. If kenzie does not open right away, the feeder will put her hand on Kenzies jaw to guide it to the Nuk. Once Kenzie gets the food from the Nuk the feeder says "Good job kenzie... Good job taking your food!" Then they give Kenzie a second or two to clear her mouth and say "Kenzie open up and show me your mouth" Kenzie at first did not understand this. They showed her a bunch of times and she still didn't get it (shes very young to just understand what they want her to do). Eventually after a few sessions they did a little finger push on her lips to get her to open her mouth and within a few times she got it. Now after a few days, the second they say this to her she thinks its a game and opens her mouth so wide and proud! Sometimes she even does it without them telling her to. When she does this in the allotted time, the 2 people in the room cheer for her and then the feeder reads 15 seconds worth of Dr. Seuss books (because its her favorite and she really responds to them). She has to do 5 bites and 5 opens, then she gets a break and then another group of 5 and 5. Their ideal time is for kenzie to do each bite within 30 seconds. As of today she was doing it even faster than that. She had some gags and usually averages 1 vomit a session but shes really doing well. Also, a goal of theirs was to get her crying down a bit. I think being in the room the last few days made the crying worse... today in the feeding room she barely cried at all! She was having fun with the feeder, smiling, laughing a little and totally interacting! Her dinner session went so quick i think it was over in like 8 minutes!

Jordan and I have asked that tomorrow they change something because we really don't want her having time to just relax. We want to get the most out of this 8 weeks. So we asked that either they try a new food (we've only been using carrots and want her used to a variety of tastes), or up her bite count. We'll find out in the morning if this will happen.

Other than that, the weekend was pretty uneventful. Jordan left at 5 today and although we were so sad, at least he left on a positive feeding note and we know he will come back Friday for a whole week! Ill be here by myself for the first time for the next few days so I'm not sure how much energy ill have to post but I will do my best.

Thanks for checking in and of course for all of the great comments! :-) I wish I had done this a year ago when Kenzie was first sick. Its going to be a really nice journal for her to read one day if she feels like it.