NICU Developmental Clinic

Every six months since she graduated from the NICU, Little Miss Minion has gone to the NICU Developmental Clinic for follow ups. Our first visit was nerve wracking. Only a week after graduating from the nicu, I had to transport my three month old to a medical center full of little kids (aka germ cesspools) and see how she was measuring up to her chronological age (spoiler alert:not very well, as was expected). We talked about her NICU stay…how she had come early due to my preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome…how she had stayed 84 days and developed sepsis, meningitis, and hydrocephalus…how she had endured brain surgery at 6 weeks old. They had me feed her, so they could see how she was handling the bottle and the Super Preemie sized bottle nipples. I left feeling like this was going to be our lives forever–shuffling her to and from various doctors and specialists. The weeks and months after that were as I’d expected. We saw pediatric neurologists, opthalmogists, hearing specialists, physical therapists, speech therapists, neurosurgeons, and our regular pediatrician. But as the months went on, the number of specialists began to dwindle as she “graduated” from their services. 

Today, LMM graduated from the NICU Developmental Clinic. I won’t have the official results for a couple of weeks yet, but here are some quotes from today’s appointment. 

“She’s absolutely perfect.”

“I can’t believe she has two shunts and presents like this.”

“I ran out of tests for this category. She blew it out of the water.”

“Didn’t she have some PVL (essentially, brain damage)? I am amazed at her development.”

The only thing we need to keep working with her on is expressive speech. The current theory is that she knows the words if they are given to her, but she has trouble “finding” them when she wants to use them. For example, if you give her a series of pictures and ask where is X, she will find it every time. But take those same pictures and ask “what’s that” and she has trouble. 

I’m happy to cross out another specialist from our list. If I’m not mistaken, this takes her down to just a pediatrician and a neurosurgeon, plus our early intervention team. She graduates from them this spring…and might even test out of the school district program that the early intervention shifts into at age three. 

All in all, it’s been a good day in the Minion household.