Feeding Update--Cleaning up in public

Some members of Team Charlotte have been inquiring as to whether Charlotte is sitting yet. Yes!! She prop-sits. She does not yet get herself into a sitting position, but she will stay in a sitting position for up to ten minutes if she's engaged with a toy. Mostly, she likes her musical toys (she is Philippe's daughter, after all). This one plays classical music--Peter & the Wolf, one of my favorites when I was little.

Charlotte's eating continues to be inconsistent. For ten days after she ate the entire bottle, she continued to eat 4 to 5 ounces at a sitting. If she drank a lot, she ate a smaller amount of solid food. If she drank a little, she ate a lot of solid food. One day she ate 1/4 cup of applesauce plus some chicken with sweet potato. Her reflux seemed vastly improved and I was able to do laundry just once a week for about 3 weeks.

It really looked like we were trending back to where we were in November, or better. Philippe and I even dared to say things like, "If she's taking 100% of calories by mouth by the time of our Milwaukee appointment, we should still go."

Yeah right. Maybe we jinxed ourselves. We're back to at least one daily major vomit.

Yesterday's, to my horror and embarrassment, was in our synagogue lobby while I was chatting with one of our lovely rabbis. We had to clean up what seemed like the g'zillionith vomit of the weekend, including a midnight affair on Sunday morning. Philippe and I just went into "reflux mode"--I got the baby to a trash can so that she didn't get the beautiful stone floor dirty. Philippe cleared my path (stroller, pump, etc.) and then got damp paper towels to clean up our trail. I got Charlotte changed while Philippe got her wet stuff into a bag, etc. Basically, we divide and conquer.

Rabbi Greenberg commented on what a good team we make, how impressed she was to watch how we just went into a kind of management mode and got it done, we just each know what the other needs to handle, or we shout instructions or "call" duties. It had been kind of a rough weekend and I think neither of us had been feeling our "teamness" particularly strongly. So, Rabbi Greenberg's words were incredibly timely--she reminded us of why this works, why we're so thrilled to be celebrating our 5th (Jewish) wedding anniversary on Friday. We are a team. Having a medically complex kid is challenging and it puts a different kind of stress on a marriage. Lots of marriages don't make it. But, most of the time, we feel like we're as stronger couple as a result of Charlotte's situation.

Thanks, Rabbi G. for pointing this out to us. Sometimes we need to be reminded.