Pushing the Patching

At M's last appointment with her surgeon, the lady asked when are we patching.  I gave her general hours that we patch from the morning until night.  And she always replies - ok.  Like a non-judgmental 'ok'.  She doesn't say that it's a great amount of time to patch, we should do more, that we and M are doing a good job; she just says 'ok' all cheery like.

I think the attempt is being made to be non-judgmental without encouraging us to do less patching, or scolding us for not doing enough patching.

But I have a hard time with silence, and hearing an 'ok' from someone who I know is thinking in her head - we're doing a good job, or they could be patching more.

So... I try to fill the space.  I said I thought we were doing a good job, I have been thinking I could probably add an extra 30 minutes to the end of every day but it's a really hard time of day.  The 2 kids are super hungry and therefore usually quite angry, my husband isn't home from work, and I'm working on making supper usually with 1 or 2 kids crying around me, being held, or throwing some sort of tantrum in the middle of the kitchen floor.  Let me answer the question you may be thinking to yourself - yes, I've tried feeding them earlier or have attempted to give them snacks.  But M in particular is only willing to accept supper at this point.

So since this appointment, where I was 'not judged' by the lady we see, I have been working super hard to get supper ready 30 minutes earlier for M to eat, and then we all eat when my husband gets home from work just as M is finishing.  This most days, gets us another 30-45 minutes more of patching.

So by the time I left the office at the appointment I had talked myself into doing this new schedule, because I apparently was feeling guilty for not patching this extra time.  I told the lady that I had to weigh my quality of life against an extra 30 minutes of patching, and well quality of life had been winning.  From the one-sided conversation I had with this lady, simply as a result of her asking me how long M was patching, I figured I must be suffering from some internal guilt.

So with a few changes, a little push from my conversation basically with myself to the lady, and patience, we have lengthened M's patching day by about 30-45 minutes everyday.  We are patching full days everyday, but now each day is just a tiny bit longer.  Instead of her having 1.5 hours of no patching at night, it's now closer to just the hour we were supposed to be having her unpatched at the end of the day.