Snoozing After a Hard Day's Work

Henry had a busy Friday afternoon. Grammy came around 2PM. Then, Tara visited around 3:30PM. Dorsett (the PT) came around 4:30PM. Henry was rather tired by the time Dorsett came, so he wasn't really up to doing a lot of physical therapy. Tara had tried to time the visit to coincide with Dorsett. When it didn't look like Dorsett was going to show, Tara did some work with him. But then Dorsett came late from another appointment on the other side of town. Dorsett thought that Henry looked amazing for a 25-weeker. She did recommend, however, that we schedule an appointment with a pediatric neurologist. Although she doesn't see any problems now, micropreemies are at higher risks for all sorts of problems, which often don't appear until later. She thought that it would be good to get a baseline done on Henry now. Besides, in the event that a problem does appear, it would be easier to be seen by a neurologist right away, if he is already someone's patient (rather than having to wait a couple months for an initial appointment). Tara is going to look into this on Tuesday.

Tara left us a copy of Dr. Tsai's evaluation. He tested at a 5-month old level for cognitive and motor skills. He tested at a 3-month old level for speech. Tara said not to worry about the speech score. She said that she couldn't see anything wrong with his speech thus far. He is after all squealing, making rasberries, smacking his lips, and saying A-Ba-Ba-Ba-Da-Ba-Ba. She doesn't expect much more out of a 6-month old.

Henry crashed around 5:30PM during a bottle. He was so wiped out that I took the dogs out by myself. He stirred around 6:30PM to finish his bottle but then passed out again. Grandpa visited around 7:30PM. Henry was sound asleep. I told my Dad that I suspected that Henry was going to be up within the hour. My Dad decided to watch Henry sleep for a few minutes but then left to spend time with my Mom. Good thing he didn't wait around. Henry didn't get up until 2:30AM. Took a bottle and then went to sleep again until 5:30AM. Very unusual.

I gave Henry a massage this morning in front of the fire. At some point, Jeff gave Henry a workout on his cylinder ball toy. The idea is to make tummy time more fun. He's learning how to shift his balance on it.









My Mom came around 9AM, because Jeff and I had some errands to run. Henry was asleep when we got back. He had been playing "Pony Boy" and feel asleep during his bouncing.

In the afternoon, Henry had a spit up episode that involved throwing up on the kitten while Jeff was walking around with him. Apparently, Jeff had a hard time tracking down Bitsy to clean her up. Other than that, Henry had a fantastic eating day. He had rice cereal and sweet potatoes during the day. At one point, he consumed over 6 ozs of breast milk/Neocate in one sitting. That's the largest amount that he has taken at once. He weighed 15 lbs 15.5 ozs. After our evening walk, I made him some avocado puree. He hasn't had it since the whole bottle strike came about. He really liked it. I was worried about the taste because I made it with Neocate, but he didn't seem to mind. The puree was very smooth. A good deal of it drizzled down his chin. Plus, he decided to practice some new spitting skills (oral development). I ended up putting the avocado puree in a medicine cup, and I let him drink it like a smoothie...an avocado smoothie, that is. He ended the day having consumed 865 mls plus the rice cereal, sweet potatoes, and avocado puree.

Jeff just called me into the bedroom. Henry is sound asleep with his caboose in the air. What a cute thing to see! Preemies often do not get into the tucked position quite so naturally as full-term babies, owing to the extra time spent on their backs rather than being curled up in the womb. This has been a very good day indeed.