He is still fighting off the cold he has. We took him to the doctor yesterday because he had been sick for two weeks and it sounded like he might be getting congested in his lungs. Fortunately, his lungs are still clear. He does have some fluid buildup behind his ears. The doctor thought he might have a sinus infection and prescribed antibiotics (Amoxicilan).
Today Henry already seems better. He still has some runny nose but not nearly as bad. He is still throwing up a little bit here and there as he crawls around but not as bad as it has been. Maybe another day or two and it will be all gone.
Going back to last week, on Wednesday he received a gift from his aunt Jennifer, a caterpillar book that reads rhymes aloud. He loves it. He is very into music, and he bounces up and down as the stories are sung. He also tried tahini for the first time. He wasn't too keen on it. It is a good source of protein but was a bit strong for him. Below is a pic, yuck tahini!
On Thursday, he received a gift from our nanny, a Zebra that he can sit on and spin around on. It was her daughter's favorite for a couple weeks before she lost interest. She is moving so this toy needed a new home. Henry likes it, but it is a little big for him yet. Soon he will be riding as intended.
He also had another visit from the occupational therapist Selah last Thursday. She worked on putting blocks back into the box instead of just pulling them out. She also is trying to get him to crawl on pillows to develop his muscles. Not much luck on either front.
On Friday, he had a visit from the physical therapist Shirley and Tara. It turns out she is a neighbor of Hank and Margaret, and they have seen her for years out walking the dogs in the morning but had never spoken. Small world. She reinforced that we need to work on straightening out his toes by massage and using shoes.
Saturday was a slow day. We took him to his grandparents' house for a few hours and went to see a movie, Baby Mama, which was cute. Kate and I gave him another present; we couldn't wait for Sunday.
Sunday was Mother's Day and also Henry's other birthday party. We went to his grandparents' house and had dinner with family and family friends. Henry opened a bunch of presents, and we all had a good time.
On Monday, he had lentils for the first time and enjoyed them. He also started to do a bear crawl (hands and feet on the floor, no knees). He's been doing that more and more all week and now is very good at it, getting faster all the time. Here are some pictures of him crawling over our very patient dog Roger.
On Tuesday, he had another visit from Selah. She commented on how the bear crawl wasn't good, and she thought the physical therapist would have some things for us to do on that front. I felt rather exasperated because to me his progress is so amazing and to try to make him undo behavior seems almost impossible. However, I felt relief when the physical therapist showed up today and thought it was wonderful that he was bear crawling.
Below is a picture of Henry at our front door. The door is glass and Henry has left his mark, those are fingerprints, snot, drool, etc showing up nicely with the flash of the camera.
Wednesday was the doctor's visit which I already mentioned. He weighed 18 lbs 13 ozs. Henry also added another trick; he raises his arms up and down at the part of the Wheels On The Bus song where the people get up and down. So now he can do wheels and up and down. We'll be working on the horn on the bus next. Very cute.
Besides that, we continue our search for a new nanny. Nothing real promising so far. Today he was able to pinch a couple of the peach puffs and get them into his mouth on his own. Most of the time he grabs them into his palm and can't get them into his mouth from there.
3 comments:
I just wanted to add that I was a bit annoyed after the OT visit on Tuesday for two reasons. First, the alarmist attitude about the bear walk seemed out of line. I have felt at times that therapists are required to come up with some problem to keep the therapy going. I'm OK with that as long as they communicate to us what real problems are and what theoretical problems are. With some of the people we see, I know that they don't always write glowing reports, even when they think Henry is doing really well, because they know that micropreemies should be constantly monitored because developmental problems often occur later in development. If you don't have someone monitoring them, you might miss opportunities to address the problems early. The "system" however is setup to terminate the therapy as soon as it is determine the child is "doing well" (going against the whole idea of early prevention for high risk groups). Consequently, with one therapist, she writes up the reports based on his chronological age, so it always looks like he is behind and can thus continue his therapy. But, she actually believes that adjusted age is where the child should be at. So she writes up the report, but gives us the "wink, wink" on Henry's true status (he's doing remarkably well for a 25 weeker). While I'm not in favor of lying, I don't mind this fudging a bit with his assessments because you have to be a dimwitted jack*** not to read the literature and recognize that all micropreemies should be monitored vigilantly through the first 8 years of their lives. Unfortunately, there are a lot of bureaucrats in government agencies and insurance companies who are just that (dimwitted jack***es). So going by chronological age in the reports is a work around for continuing therapy.
Going back to Tuesday, I was annoyed because I'm not convinced that the bear crawl is a problem. In fact, I bought a book on motor skills, which seemed to suggest that babies start doing the bear crawl when they have developed strong upper body strength because the bear crawl position is more of a workout for the upper body; it also allows the baby to move faster than the quad crawl. It said that babies often start doing it around 9 months. Henry turned 9 months adjusted on Sunday and was bear crawling on Monday. Apparently, when Jeff was a baby, he only did the bear crawl. I haven't noticed any lingering effects of "only bear crawling" in Jeff. Moreover, Henry does three different types of crawling depending on the type of surface area and how fast he wants to move. He doesn't like the feel of the tile on his knees, so he bear crawls. Makes sense to me.
When we asked Selah, "What are the negative consequences of the bear crawl?" She said that some babies then only do the bear crawl. OK. So what? Whoopdydoo.
Second, he was spitting up all over the place during her visit. And she seemed unsettled by it. She said, "Well, have you taking him to the doctors?" I said, "No. As we have said before, unless he's puking up blood, won't move, or losing 10% of his body weight, the doctors won't do anything." She then asked us if we were happy with the doctor situation. Ummm...no, as we have told her before, but we are on pediatrician number 2 and at least he does return our calls in a timely fashion. The truth is that I'm still pissed off about our situation in January when I feel like both he and the Urgent Care doctor did not take our concerns seriously, and I essentially came up with the diagnosed after picking Cuyler's brain about possibilities. But I didn't think that the current spit up situation merited a "freak out" because: (a) Henry had had a cold, (b) he was spitting up a lot, but it had mucous in it, suggesting the drainage was upsetting his stomach, (c) he was clearly NOT lethargic, (d) he was in a pleasant mood, (e) it was a lot of spit up but it was NOT projectile vomiting, (f) it didn't seem as though he'd lost any weight, and (g) Jeff and I both still have a little bit of this cold as well; we can't shake it either. The comment that irked me was when the OT said, "Well, if it was my child, I'd make sure the doctors figured out what the problem was." I realized that these therapists work with a lot of families who do not take an active interest in their children. To imply that was the case with me and Jeff is absolutely absurd.
The whole visit undermined my confidence in her. I think that she is a well-intentioned person, but I would be happy to reduce visits to once every two weeks. I don't have the psychological energy to waste on problems that aren't there. We've already been through the ringer for the past year with real problems. I want to save my energy for those, if and when they arise.
As it turned out, we did end up taking Henry to Dr. Bianchi's office Wednesday. I had felt a rattling in his chest. The problem was that I couldn't tell whether it was something in his trachea that was rattling around (making it seem as though there was something reverberating in the lungs), or whether there was something really in the lungs. At one point, he coughed and I thought the rattling had subsided (suggesting the former), but it started up again later. We have a stethoscope from Walgreen's, but I don't know what to listen for exactly. Because of RSV concerns, etc., we thought it was better to be safe than sorry. And we were pleased that it was just some mucous rattling in his trachea. We were also glad to get him on the antibiotics to try to knock this cold out.
Dr. Bianchi warned us again about the measles outbreak. There have been a few more cases (in young children no less). We told him that the county health department doesn't do the separated shot, but that our friend's pediatrician said that the single measles shot could be ordered through Merck. He wasn't aware of that, and he was amenable to getting the single shot. He wrote us a prescription, so I will call Merck today and see how to proceed. I was pleased that he is going to work with us on this issue. Certainly a point in his favor.
Sounds very frustrating in deed. But I think you have the right attitude about it. Two of my children never really crawled and they are smart as can be. Brooklyn, Scooter as we called her because this girl NEVER crawled, only scooted along on her bottom using her legs to pull herself around. It was very cute, but quickly wore out the bottoms of most her clothes as that was not the area in which the clothing makers tended to reinforce them. I had someone tell me that her scooting was not good and that it showed she wouldn’t develop “normally” or be as smart as other kids. That it was a proven study that "they" did. Well, Brooklyn blew that study right out of the water. At 4 she is already reading small words and writing long notes to us phonetically. She amazes us. Colton crawled a LITTLE bit, but really just preferred the army crawl to anything else. Never really getting up on all 4's at all. I would say no worries there guys.
Hope the pursuit of the measles shot works out.
Kaylynn,
That's interesting about Brooklyn and Colton. It is nice to hear counter examples to the theories.
Our son's first PT Dorsett said that there was a prominent doctor from Philadelphia who came up with the theory about why crawling was necessary for mental development, but that in her experience, she'd seen a lot of cases that seemed to negate the theory.
Selah (OT) visited yesterday. I guess she was trained in CA where the therapists that she was working with were adamant that bear crawling was bad. She seemed OK when we told her that both of Henry's PTs were fine with the bear crawl. So that's good.
I'm quite hopeful that the measles shot will work out. We unfortunately haven't had a chance to talk to Dr. Bianchi yet about ordering it. We've been a bit swamped trying to figure out the nanny situation. Hopefully, we'll get that sorted out soon.
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