Sippy Cups and sleep

At Owen's 18 month appointment his pediatrician told us that he felt it would be ok for us to start transitioning Owen to a sippy cup. For most parents this is a big step, for parents of children with Laryngeal Clefts, it's huge. You see for the last 18 months every time Owen has had any liquid he has been at risk for aspiration, aspiration can lead to pneumonia, pneumonia can lead to lung damage. Literally every time Owen has been given a bottle of milk or water these were the thoughts that went through our head. And we did many things to prevent it. We only allowed Owen to have a slow flow bottle, we thickened his formula and milk to a consistency that proved to be safer for him when swallowing and yet that risk was still there. If he grabbed his buddy's or cousin's bottle or sippy cup we had to deal with the risk. In the beginning you would have had no idea that he was aspirating either. He did not choke or clear his throat. He would just happily drink as fluid spilled into his lungs. As he got older he began to cough more, you could hear him sputtering and coughing after he drank which let us know he was most definitely aspirating. Even worse for hours afterwards he would hear the gurgley and congested sound of the fluid in his lungs.

That all changed on March 12th when he had surgery. As weeks go by he has had less choking, less gurgling in his throat and lungs, he is swallowing better already. Is he 100% cured? No not yet. It can take up to three months to see a complete resolve of choking and aspiration but for being less than a month out from surgery, to see this type of improvement, to be ready for this transition is huge! As of today Owen is 100% off bottles. He gets a sippy cup of milk in the morning and a sippy cup of milk at night before we brush his teeth. During the day he gets a sippy cup of water (refilled as much as he wants) and at night he has a sippy cup of water by his bed in case he gets thirsty. We don't do juice mostly because it doesn't have an nutritional value and it's not really recommended for reflux kids anyway. It's exciting to finally have him off the bottle, something we would have done months ago had he not had the medical issues he had.  It's even better that it was a really smooth transition.

Our next step is to get him back on his bedtime routine. With the surgery and the random sicknesses he dealt with following it he definitely got way off his schedule. Even worse he really does not want to sleep alone. We (his doctor and us) think he is probably still scared from everything he went through so we aren't going to push this transition as quickly as we did with the sippy cups (essentially we said no more bottles and it was so). We are praying that this transition will be somewhat smooth and that we can get him into his own bed sleeping through the night before Carson is born. Owen has never been a good sleeper. He has never wanted to really sleep alone and he has slept completely through the night a hand full of times. So we are going to take it a day at a time. He has been through a lot in the last eighteen months. He has had to deal with a lot of pain and it was worse at night. There are fears he will have to get over and we are trying to figure out the best way to do it. However we are very hopeful!