New Patching Routine

I have officially decided that all of the moms before me were right! As soon as you figure out what works for your baby, it’s going to change. This is especially true for those other patching parents! I thought that I had our patching routine down in the mornings! Our mornings would start bright and early. I would go get Olivia from her crib, bright eyed and bushy tailed at 5am. We would get dressed, sing our patch song:

“it’s time to put our cute patch on, don’t worry it wont be on for long, its going to make our eye so strong!”

and place the eye patch on my reluctant little Olivia. Then we would start the 3-hour timer and fill our morning with all her toys, Moana, snacks and a few nap breaks. Our 3-hour patching time would turn into 5 due to a nice long 2-hour nap but by noon we were almost always finished with the patch. I count to three out loud and pull the patch off. As her eye refocuses on the world around her, the baby who was so quiet all morning and solely focused on using that ‘Nemo’ eye, all of a sudden is a bundle of life, giggles and most recently, some pretty impressive gymnastic moves – like momma like daughter I guess ☺. But of course, as soon as I got comfortable with this new normal, Olivia went through a wonderful growth spurt. Her mind has doubled in this last month and I am convinced our little warrior just became aware of what she can’t see.

Instead of spending our morning focused on toys and movies I am constantly combatting her little ninja hand from reaching up and ripping the patch off! Her little fingers are the perfect size to get under the sticky part of the patch right by her nose. With every removal attempt, she gets a little more of the sticky patch off until I look away for approximately 3 seconds – giving her enough time to put all of her might behind those two little fingers as she rips off the patch.

Now, rather than doing a long chunk of patching, our routine has changed to completing at least 90 minutes of patching as soon as she wakes up and then another 90 minutes later in the day. Today was the first day of this split of patching and Olivia was NOT a fan of double patch time throughout her day. We were able to get the full 90 minutes in the morning but only 40 minutes in the afternoon. Rather than fretting over the time not patched, I celebrate the time we did get in. I am so proud of Olivia and am in awe of her strength every single day. Despite how upset she gets when she cant see Moana dance across the screen or has to hold the books super close to her face to see the pictures, she still plays a mean game of peek a boo and rolls around with the kitty. So, you are all on this journey with me as I figure out what will work next for this strong willed patcher. She smiles the biggest, brightest smile even with her vision occluded and that reminds me that we are doing the right thing in pushing our princess and of course…to just keep patching.