Tongues and Rope Swings

Well, we're currently three for four as far as occupational therapy goes, and Charlie has an IEP meeting and evaluation scheduled so we might just go ahead and make it an even four for four.   Jamie's in for fine motor skills.  Robbie poor facial muscle tone.  And William, feeding problems.  Turns out occupational therapists are jack of all trades and basically you get sent to one for just about everything.   I was joking with Robbie's OT that their job is harder and covers more specialties than any doctor and he totally agreed as he sat on my living room floor with his bags of therapy toys and my two year old climbing on his head. 

Poor William.  Little did he know that while he was bouncing around in a vat of amniotic fluid, his tongue wasn't supposed to be glued to the roof of his mouth.  Now nothing in his mouth works right.  Listening to the dr is like listening to the naughty list for Christmas (in length and breadth but not necessarily variety).  "His palette is too high...and dome shaped...and narrow.  His tongue is too small for his mouth...and has no muscle tone...and won't come forward properly,which is why he gags and pulls off your nipple.  He feels like he's drowning and can't breathe."
Awesome.  So basically while everyone else is snuggling and nourishing their child, I'm water boarding mine.

So he had his second tongue tie revision today.  "Repeat frenectomy for a reattached posterior tie on the left side" is what I believe the paperwork said.  All Will understood was: "I was perfectly happy until someone tied me in a torture device, taped my eyes shut and burned the living crap out of my mouth with a fiery knife and made me so mad I'm never going to forgive mommy...ever."    I wouldn't have taken him in again...the first tongue tie revision was so traumatic, but he was nursing worse and worse.   Gagging, choking, coming off and on....not gaining weight, so something had to be done.  We currently own at least eleven different kinds of bottles and nipples, two different breast pumps, and a tube/syringe setup, and he despises all of it, so back to the Dr. we went to figure out what was going wrong with the only thing he will at least attempt, breastfeeding.  I can only hope he's like Jamie and turns into an awesome consumer of vittles eventually. 

Oh and the baby has thrush again, so it looks like I need to lay off those dark chocolate chips I've eating in the corner while rocking back and forth telling myself everything's going to be all right.

But no, I say that and we're all actually doing fine.  Besides the epic level of sleep deprivation I self inflicted on this week thanks to my stupidity, I really can't stop marveling at how easy my life is right now.  While I was pacing around the house with an inconsolable baby, the kids were playing on the rope swing in the backyard.  After that they went and rode bikes with the neighbor kid up and down our nice quiet cul-de-sac, then they pretended they were dinosaurs and went tearing up and down the hall and doing back flips off the couch (actually, only Charlie can do a back flip but Jamie can do a mean shoulder roll).   A month ago that same scenario would have resulted in a neighbor or two cussing me out, a call from the office management, and a toddler trying to commit suicide down three flights of stairs all while the next door neighbor screamed at his girlfriend through a cloud of marijuana smoke.  So now I literally feel like I've moved to Buckingham Palace... if Buckingham Palace had weird mis matching kitchen cabinets, a neon green bathroom and folding table and chairs for a dining set.  :-D

Will's tongue may not work right, but that didn't seem to stop him from going on and on and on about the injustice of it all.