More food!

The photo above where Toby is lying on Martin is actually part of Toby's physio exercises - he's working on his neck and head control as well as stretching out some other muscles.

Here's a photo of Toby asleep in the garden - the weather hasn't been great this week so we have taken advantage of every bit of sun. We really do need to get Toby's hair cut - its rather wild at the moment and the two shaved patches don't help. Maybe we will take Toby and Mat to the hairdressers next week - Mat's hair is far too long for school in two weeks time.


This week has really been focused upon food! Toby has been really enjoying the meals we have given him and will just keep on opening his mouth for more. This makes it quite tricky to decide when to stop - I don't want to leave him hungry but equally I don't want to make him feel bloated and uncomfortable. Trying to judge how much he can or should eat is tricky as we have missed 5 months of development - Toby has grown quite alot over the past 5 months despite the infections he developed whilst in hospital but it feels like we have jumped from having a 12 month old baby to a toddler of 17 months - in terms of his size anyway. I still think of Tobes as my baby - in many ways he has gone back to early baby days but he is more of a toddler in size. A similar thing has happened a bit with Mat - I still see Mat as a young boy in my mind but between March and August Mat has become a relatively independent adolescent but I missed out on the process of this development and frequently get caught out as I have to readjust to this new, grown up Mat.



Toby's sleep pattern is rather variable still - on some nights he will wake in the early hours of the morning and lay in bed talking to himself and sucking his fingers, other nights he will sleep through until about 5am. We are trying to limit his daytime sleep to short naps but it always feels wrong to wake him when he sleeps so soundly during the day.

We are struggling to find activities for Toby - he enjoys being outside and seems to like going for walks - I guess the wind and the feeling of movement in the pushchair is quite stimulating for him. We have gathered together his more tactile toys that might be interesting for him to feel and added these to the sensory bag that one of my team members, Caroline, put together for him whilst we were in hospital. He doesn't show obvious signs of enjoyment but does go still at times, suggesting that he is taking in this new information. We need to buy or build an arch that we can hang toys from - we have used a piece of string tied between chairs at the moment and he does seem to be hitting out at the toys hanging down. We have had visits from members of the sensory impairment team and Portage Service who have said they can lend us some toys that will hopefully be more suitable. Martin is planning to build a resonance board - I think this is a piece of wood suspended on legs that Toby can lie on and feel vibrations of sound. It will be interesting to see whether Toby responds to music in this way as he always used to enjoy music and we used to sing all the time - well I sang and he clapped. We also need to get Mat playing his electric guitar with the amp on the resonance board to see whether Tobes enjoys heavy rock rather than nursery rhymes!

This short video clip shows Toby eating dinner - a bit messy but he's doing really well considering we only began giving him food again 2 weeks ago.




We are off to the Child Development Centre today to receive their report and discuss goals and the support they can give in terms of physio, OT and SLT sessions.



Lisa

20 Aug