Change and Progress and Early Christmas

December 20, 2016

Change and Progress and Early Christmas

I promised another blog post, and here it is. Life has been good for little Abby!

On the 9th, I took Abby to clinic. I was a little apprehensive about going without Rhett - he had someone shadowing him at work - but thankfully she behaved really well (and we both took a good nap when we got home). Neurosurgery was really happy with how her back and her shunt were looking. We have no concerns with the performance of the shunt - awesome! Neurology was pleased with her cognitive development - another thing I had no concerns over. Abby has great fine motor skills and is a smart little cookie.

The physical therapist expressed his concern of us moving to the Davis school district, as apparently the therapists provided by the early intervention program there are not as good as others. In looking at Abby's gross motor skills, he decided she is too far behind to rely on just the early intervention program. He gave us orders for outpatient physical therapy that we'll start up in January. There is an Intermountain building just a few blocks away from us that we can see regularly. So, we'll get therapy four times a month. Hopefully that'll really help speed along her gross motor skills. He gave us instructions to really rough house with her and get her to the point where she's more okay with being on her stomach, so that she can hopefully have the desire to roll onto it. She can roll onto her back from her stomach just fine, it's the other way around that's tricky. After doing that for just a few days, we could see her improvement. I think we're close to rolling over!

For the last few months we've been struggling with getting Abby's constipation under control, without going too far and giving her diarrhea. As much as that's been, we were happy to get some good advice at clinic as to how to manage her bowels. We have now (after much trial/error/experimentation) settled on feeding Abby half a container of pureed prunes each morning. Being consistent with this has helped her little body to be more regular and less uncomfortable. Hopefully that will be our happy balance and won't have to be adjusted any more. We'll see... :)

After clinic, we went to the Imaging Office and got her renal ultrasound taken care of. She was so well behaved and was content just to watch the process take place! Whew. I was relieved. We haven't received a call from the urologist, so we just assume that we still don't need to cath Abby. No news is good news.

Last Thursday we had our first visit from our physical therapist from Early Intervention. I had major doubts about how successful the visit would be, based on what the PT at clinic told me. I was really pleasantly surprised! Rhett and I were so happy with how our appointment went. She just jumped right in and showed us so many new things we could be doing with Abby to encourage her development. We were happy with our PT in Midvale, but after looking back on our time with her, we think that things were just being maintained and our exercises weren't having much effect on Abby's development. While good, they could have definitely been better. I really think that our new PT has enough experience under her belt to help us make bigger strides toward a moving Abby (pun not intended, but delightful nonetheless). So anyway, after being a little skeptical, things with early intervention are off to a great start!

On Friday we went to Sandy for her 9 month pediatrician appointment. Side note: yes, we're keeping her pediatrician there even though it's a bit of a drive. We love her and feel very comfortable with her care of Abby and knowledge of her various diagnoses. I don't see us changing pediatricians in the near (or distant) future. That visit went as planned, and we didn't get any news we weren't expecting. She's eating like she needs to and is right on schedule for her growth. She weighed 21.72 pounds, the 90th percentile, and is 28.74 inches tall, the 87th percentile. Huge leaps and bounds from being in the 5th and 15th percentiles, respectively. Her head was in the 93rd percentile, which is much more proportionate than at birth. I'm so proud of her!

This is how I found her one morning. She knows her comfort levels.

With all of the appointments, it was obvious to us how blessed we've been. Not only is Abby doing well in almost everything, we live so close to all of her specialists. There were people at clinic from Colorado and Vegas and I was feeling much better about being there by myself after just a 25 minute drive. We're so grateful to all of you for your love and support and also to our Heavenly Father for blessing us with a beautiful and wonderful little girl.

And of course, because it's the holiday season. Here are a few Christmas pictures. (Yes, we celebrated a week early - and Santa was happy to oblige and visit us after we explained that we would be in Richfield for Christmas day. He's so understanding to make a special trip to us early! :))

Maybe a little confused about how pajamas are supposed to work...

Leaving cookies and milk for Santa and carrots for the reindeer!

Yep, Santa came. And her parents also decided to put a bow on the sled that she had already used - that's what happens when she uses her gift from us early. It was that kind of a year :)