Ryan's November '09 Blog
November 11, 2009 - Things have been going well for us. Ryan is slowly picking up new words including up and awesome. Now when he wakes up you usually hear up, all done, da da. Saturday morning he woke up around 5:15 and with in minutes we heard him almost sing, 'Oooh Da Da!' Mom & Dad both could not believe what we heard over the monitor and started cracking up. He is in the hurt feelings stage. Every little thing can hurt his feelings. If Dad just says Ryan in a slightly stern voice - Ryan gives the pouty lip and tries to give you a crying face. If you tell him no he does the same thing. On Monday the caretaker said almost every little thing hurt his feelings and she wasn't being stern with him. Ryan had ABM 4 times over the weekend and one session last night. The therapist was seeing some nice changes in him and was getting him up onto his knees in a type of crawling position without fussing. We're hoping to take her approach to work on getting him in that position more to get him comfortable with it to then work on moving in the crawling position. We forgot to stay that Ryan got to see his nurse Suzi a few weeks ago. She came and watched him while Mom & Dad went to their NICU meeting. It was sure good to see her and he's changed a lot since she saw him last. Ryan did do something bad recently. He hit the caretaker in the nose with his head on accident. It fractured her nose. We feel sooo bad but luckily it falls under her company's workman's comp.Mom recently picked up a book on teaching gross motor skills to kids with cerebral palsy (cp). It has actually been almost eye opening to read some of what it said. For instance we didn't realize that when Ryan gets emotional in any way - happy, mad, sad, etc., it can make his tone worse. For those that don't know what we mean by tone it is the spasticity or tight muscles that Ryan has from the cp. So when we work with him and he starts complaining it can make his tone worse and it defeats the exercise we're trying to do. We never even thought about that before so now we're really trying to watch his emotions to try to get the best result from the exercise possible. The book has some exercises we already do but also given us some great ideas on new things we can do. For example when we are working on sitting we're having him sit on a folded beach towel. This reduces the stretch in the hamstrings (which is one of our biggest problems with sitting on the floor) so it is easier for him to sit. It has made quite a difference already. We still stretch hamstring in other exercises but relieving just this little amount helps put him in a proper sitting position so he can work on balance and trunk strength. We've been discussing what the book says with our physical therapist and so far she agrees with what the book says and little changes we've been making to his exercises. It has definitely helped give us a new spark since we have been feeling like we were hitting a wall again.
Mom has been feeling good and this morning she had surgery to help keep the new baby inside. Surgery was at 8 a.m. and we left the hospital to come home at 10. Mom couldn't eat after midnight and no liquids after 6 a.m. She was a bit worried about with how hungry this kid has been making her but she did better than expected. Mom has just had some cramping after surgery but this evening it is very minimal and she hasn't had to take any pain meds since before she left the hospital. She is planning on working from home the rest of the week and back in the office Monday. Starting today though no more picking up Ryan. It is definitely going to make life interesting but we'll get through it. Grandma Connie is coming tomorrow to help through the weekend as we get adjusted to the changes.
November 22, 2009 - Ryan is doing well. On the 13th we took him in for his flu booster and had him weighed - 29 lbs 1 oz. We've been working on sitting, standing, stretching and he's doing pretty good. We've had him resist getting into the crawling position and we've been working on having him sit in a chair or at his little table. If you get him in the right posture he does great with playing with toys on the table. We had an OT evaluation a few weeks ago as we're fighting to get OT once a week versus twice a month. The evaluation showed that Ryan hasn't improved in his fine motor skills in the last year. Was a little worse than we expected because we have seen improvement in his grabbing. He has improved there but not in enough other areas to make the numbers any different. Still severely behind. We think we have a good case to increase services. If they don't agree then we'll find one and bill it through our insurance versus the Infant Toddler Program. Yesterday we ran to Parma to Grandma & Grandpa's so Dad could help put up Christmas lights. Ryan had a good time and did well although when we left their house at 8 p.m. he fell asleep in the car seat rather fast. Of course he was up at 5:30 today.
This will be a nice short week and we're looking forward to the holiday (and time off). We hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving and has safe holiday travels!
November 29, 2009 - We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Ours was very nice. We went to Parma on Wednesday afternoon until Friday late morning. Ryan enjoyed all the attention but Wednesday night had a meltdown around 11:30 p.m. He had been asleep but woke up and it took us until 1 or 2 a.m. to get him back to sleep. It was not fun. He napped well on Thanksgiving and slept great Thanksgiving night because he was so tired. We went to the Great Grandparents in Parma for dinner. Mom & Dad made their turkey recipe. We pureed some up with gravy for Ryan and he did really well eating it. We also tried sweet potatoes but they were a little too sweet for him. He was all out of whack in terms of calories and yesterday we finally got him back on track. He was definitely happy to be back home.
We got OT approved for once a week and that will start a week from tomorrow. Otherwise everything has been going pretty good. The new thing he's been doing this week is Dad got him to blow with his mouth. Next birthday he may actually be able to blow out his candles!
Monday Mom had one of her best friends, Stephanie, who does ultrasounds for a living, scan her so they could see if they could tell what sex the baby is. Mom then went and got some BSU baby booties in pink or blue that the baby is. Mom wrapped the booties and gave them to Dad after we got to the Great Grandparents on Thanskgiving. Mom and Dad had kind of assumed what we were having based on how the pregnancy is going but the rest of the family was excited to hear what we're having. Click here to see what we're having.