Catching Up

First official physical therapy visit was today. Little Miss Minion did very well and earned the long nap she’s currently enjoying.

The physical therapy is offered by the early intervention team she qualified for due to her birth weight and prematurity. They send a physical therapist to our house to work with us and help make sure she’s developing according to her adjusted schedule.

She was very impressed. Head and neck control continues to be one of her strongest abilities, followed by her core/back muscles. After I feed her, I’ll usually sit her on the edge of the kitchen table and stabilize her with my arms around her as I work on the computer. She’s very secure, although I know that description is not the best. Anyway, she builds her back and abdominal muscles doing that, which is getting her very close to unsupported sitting.

She’s smiling much more and is very social, according to the PT (physical therapist). She doesn’t like to track objects with her eyes, but she will follow my face. We think she just prefers faces right now, which is normal.

Our goals for this week include 30 minutes of Tummy Time per day instead of 15. We usually do this after I “commute” home. It’s a good way for me to shift out of Work Mode and back into Mommy Mode. We will be having her lay on her sides (in preparation for rolling over) and having her do baby push ups on her stomach. She can also lay over my legs or be held horizontally on our laps. The goal with this is to build the muscles on the back of her neck. We work the front of her neck when we pull her up from diaper changes by her hands.

The only area that she needs actual practice with is her leg flexibility, and that’s more of a “she’s still too young” issue than an actual issue. They want her legs to be able to stretch a certain amount when they are extended. I can barely do it, and she’s only “behind” by about a 10 degree angle.

All in all, it was a very good therapy visit. We really wore her out.

Short but Sweet

We had our first physical therapy assessment on Monday evening. The early intervention team sends specialists out to our house and they provide different services for Little Miss Minion. RIght now, she will just be seeing the physical therapist to make sure her head preference gets worked on. I think Mr Minion and I would like them to come out once a week, so when we have our meeting, we will get to pick the frequency.

Overall, the physical therapist (PT) was very happy with her. She was very impressed with her head and neck control, which is far ahead of her adjusted age. Since the stitches are coming out more, I feel like her head preference is going away a little bit, but we are going to do the things the PT suggested anyway. We have a play mat/gym thing that we use for Tummy Time right now, and PT suggested that we lean her back in the Boppy to get her to look up more and to angle it so she has to look to the right in order to see interesting things.

Tonight, we are going to try her out on regular, newborn low-flow nipples. She is handling her food so well and doesn’t usually dribble at all, unless she is tired, so we think she might be ready for the next level. She gets fussy toward the end, just like she did before we moved from the Ultra Preemie to the Preemie size.

During Tummy Time the other day, she kicked herself over from her stomach to her back. She has incredible ab muscles. Its so exciting to see her doing normal newborn things.

Other than that, not too much to report. She enjoys her naps and her food. I wish my life was this simple. 🙂

Happy Due Date!

Little Miss Minion has reached her due date today! She is officially 40 weeks adjusted age, which means we can start looking for her to act more like a newborn. She is already more awake during the day and sleeping more/deeper at night. We talked to the pediatrician and she said its very normal for them to do this after graduating from the NICU, which is never really quiet or dark. One of our primaries also told us this the day she was discharged. If any of you are reading, we miss you all!

I have finally started to go through and organize the paperwork from the hospital. I have one folder for her NICU documents, one for her pediatrician, one for her physical and occupational therapists, one for her neurologists (neurosurgeon and pediatric neurologist), and one for Medicaid/SSI. There are also folders of keepsake stuff, informational stuff about Preemies, and her discharge class documents. Her room is mostly put together, her laundry is mostly done, and the house is coming back together reasonably well. 84 days in the NICU does not a clean house make. 🙂

We had our first official Tummy Time yesterday! I had her on my chest for her post-bottle nap, and when she woke up, she was pushing off me and trying to crawl over my shoulder. We laid a blanket down and laid her on her stomach to see what she would do. She was kicking her legs, like she was trying to crawl, so I put my hands behind her feet so she would have something to kick against–she pushed herself a good six inches across the blanket. Very impressive. She can lift her head up and look around as well. When she was laying on me, she kept whacking her head against my nose or my chin, trying to look around. Mr Minion put her play mat-gym together this morning and she played with that while we ate breakfast. We set it up in the living room, which is pretty much directly in the line of sight from our dining room table, so she was under full supervision. It has a little mobile that plays music and some dangling zoo animals, including a lion in Gryffindor colors that I have named Godric. She was reaching out for the animals and hit a couple of them, but I am not entirely sure whether she meant to grab them or not.

Something we mentioned to her pediatrician and something we will be following up with physical therapy (PT) is her head favoritism, probably due to the placement of her shunt. She tends to avoid laying on that side of her head, which will eventually result in the other side of her head being flatter and her neck muscles being unevenly developed. Until her PT appointment, our pediatrician recommended rolling up a blanket or washcloth and putting it behind her so that it is harder for her to roll her head off of her shunt. I don’t think that it hurts her, but it probably feels different to her and she doesn’t like it. I don’t really blame her.

We have started offering her about 60-65 mls of milk at each feeding. We are going to reduce her 2am feeding to 30 mls, since she is sleeping so much better. Her pediatrician said we could start getting rid of that one if Little Miss Minion tolerates it. She likes her sleep, so I think she will be much happier. Not going to lie, but Mr Minion and I will be much happier as well. We also like our sleep. We also bumped her from the Ultra Preemie nipple to the Preemie nipple because her feedings were taking an hour and she was getting angry and tired. Since the switch, she has been finishing in about 30 minutes and is much happier.

I made cajun chicken pasta last night for dinner. Chicken, mushrooms, roasted peppers, red onions, cream sauce. It is so nice to be able to cook again. I’ve missed it. Tonight, I’m making our weekly menu for the first time in 3 months so I can go shopping tomorrow.