Aye, how this blog has been deserted. Well, we're back.
Let's see. We had a great Thanksgiving dinner with the family. Instead of cooking the traditional Thanksgiving feast I opted for some barbecue baby back ribs, baked potatoes and chocolate covered strawberries. Mother in law brought over some salad and green bean casserole (my favorite).
James was wearing a cute outfit from his great grandma. It says 'Mommy's Little Turkey' on the front. He was all excited for the celebration but then fell asleep right after lunch.
December
Ryan and I took James for his 6 months (post-hospital discharge) checkup at Easter Seal building in Peoria. We were scheduled to meet with 2 physical therapist to do an evaluation on James' skills development. Just when you have your kiddo on a schedule, bam, you have an early appointment and everything goes down the hill. James was quite sleepy that morning. He wasn't eating much of his breakfast at home, so we fed him while we were waiting for our appointment.
The session itself was... an interesting one. There were 2 PTs, they gave James 2 wooden cubes as big as his hands. He wasn't able to keep those cubes in his hands. They told us that James isn't quite there yet to be holding cubes. I wish they would give him smaller cubes so they could see what James can do. Anyways, so they did some stretching exercise with him, propped him up and laid him on his tummy. They questioned us if we had any PT working with James, which we answered with a 'no'. They looked a bit shocked to hear that from us. So I had to explained to them that we have an OT (occupational therapist) who visits every 3 months. The OT told us that James was doing good at the last evaluation and saw no need to ask for a PT visit. She gave us some ideas which exercises would be good for James to get him started on new skills. Based on these information I didn't ask for a PT to come over. I mean.. how much does that cost?
Anyways, I drifted. So, the PT thought it was ..hm.... unusual of us (or maybe .. dear Lord, these parents are hopeless) that we didn't ask for a PT. Long story short, they spent 10 minutes with James and decided that he's way behind. At this point I was in a defensive mode. I told them that I've done exercises with James everyday. I asked them if a kid that small really could do all these skills they mentioned (roll over, reaching everything, sitting up properly). The PT said that weight isn't the matter. A kid with the same adjusted age as James should do all these stuff. I asked if the fact that James spent 4 months in NICU and was on Oxygen machine until September (?) could be one of the reason of the delay. The PTs think that's really not the case.
At the end of the session we saw a NICU doctor for follow up and made a schedule to have a PT to work with James one on one.
After what we thought was a brutal morning Ryan and I decided to go to Starbucks to cool down. Since we were already in Peoria I thought of calling NICU to see if Laura (James' former nurse) was at work, and she was.
We talked to Laura about our morning and she told us not to be discouraged. She mentioned that each child learns at different pace. Laura encouraged us to keep working with James. We may not see the result right away, but all the exercises sure will help James later. We definitely felt better after talking to Laura. We needed to hear something positive after James' physical evaluation.
Still in December...
We finally met Ben (James' PT) and he did a more thorough evaluation on James. Unlike the 10 minutes session we had a whole hour. I think Ben really got to know James. I had to tell Ben about the last experience (does this make me a bad person?) at Easter Seal. He mentioned that children who were born as early as James and spent months on oxygen tends to have a little more delay on their skills. Their muscles get a little weaker after being put on oxygen support for a while. Anyways, he gave us a list of exercise to get James ready to roll over and to get used to being on his tummy.
We feel much better now after hearing that while James has a delay in his skills (as expected) and with proper exercise James shouldn't have difficulties catching up.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My mother told me that the 10 minute session was a wake-up call for us. She said that it might be necessary for us to hear that things may not go as well as we wanted. Since the 2 appointments we've been working even harder with James. The kid is being consistent as always (translation = he cries throughout the exercise). He made wonderful progress since then. He grabs everything (hair, coat rack, face, eyelids (ha!), clothes, etc.). He also finally rolled to his back! That was a glorious day and for another post.
I will post some pictures from 2012 later.
Thank you for all the prayers and support for our little guy. He is our little sunshine :)
