Posts filed under 'Babies'
Here are some short movies that we’ve wanted to share, but haven’t had the time to convert to a more reasonable format.
The first two are from Anna’s first birthday party (3/11/2007). She wasn’t quite sure of the singing and she certainly wasn’t sure of the cake. Birthday song (4.5MB) and Let her eat cake (2.3MB).
The third movie is an illustration of the crazy things we parents do to make our children “do” something for the camera. Anna started “babbling” in a way that made her sound like she was literally speaking a foreign language. Neal carried on a “conversation” with her which lasted much longer than this clip. Enjoy… Anna speaks Dirka (5.9MB on 3/17/2007).
March 27th, 2007
We completed our first week of casting therapy!! We’ve had 2 formal therapy sessions down at Children’s and two more sessions here at the house. Needless to say, we’re glad it is the weekend! Two more weeks and 9 or 10 more sessions to go.
Anna has tolerated the cast quite well. We leave it on all day and remove it right after dinner in the evening. She doesn’t have to wear it at night - thank God. She generally fusses and gives me dirty looks during the first 30 minutes to 1 hour after I put the cast on, but then she’s back to her happy self. Most of the therapy we do revolves around eating. That means we get 4 opportunities for very focused therapy each day (meals plus snack time). It is hard to keep a 1-year-old “on task” when doing play therapy. We do an activity for about 5 minutes and she’s ready to move onto something else. Eating, on the other hand, takes advantage of her motivation. We can spend 45 minutes to an hour doing the same thing over and over and over again, and she doesn’t really tire of it until she’s full!
I know it has only been a week, but we’re already noticing progress! When we started this therapy Anna was able to spoon-feed herself (sort of) using her left hand (see movie from a few weeks ago). She could also hold a biter biscuit (long cookie, for those of you who are unfamiliar with what a biter biscuit is) in her left hand, but often forgot it was there after a few nibbles and it ended up falling out of her hand. She was unable to pick up food items off her tray - no matter the size. That was so last week.
I’m pleased to report that Anna is spoon-feeding herself with her left; holding the biter biscuit in her left hand, dipping it in yogurt, putting it in her mouth, and repeating the process over and over; and picking up puffs (think cheerios) with her thumb and index finger and actually getting them to her mouth on her own (hit or miss on the getting them to her mouth, but progress nonetheless). All I can say is “WOW!”
Anna’s regular OT was extremely impressed with her progress. She was stunned at how much was accomplished in just one week’s time. And I think Anna’s OT down at Children’s was a little taken aback at how quickly Anna had picked up these skills (obviously she doesn’t know Anna, huh?). Of course, there is still a long way to go, but we are so encouraged by these small steps! We’ll be sure to keep you posted on her progress during the next 2 weeks. I hope we’ll have even more to report.
March 23rd, 2007
Anna had her first full-day of casting today, and we’re pleased to say that it went well. She was really pretty bent for the first 30 minutes or so after we put it on this morning, but seemed to adjust well thereafter. Anna was just getting to the stage where she didn’t need constant attention while playing or eating; with the cast it feels like we’ve been transported back several months. She pretty much always needs someone there to help her grasp toys or read books. And mealtimes are a true challenge! She’s independent enough that she wants to feed herself all the time now, but she becomes incredibly frustrated when she isn’t able to do it with her left hand. With a little help from Mom and Dad, she’s able to have some success, however. I’m anxious for her “formal” therapy to begin on Monday. I would like to know what types of activities will have the most impact. I feel a bit like I’m flying blind.
I uploaded a couple of pictures I took today. Anna was eating a biter biscuit with her left hand. I included one that shows what her cast looks like, for those who are interested. It was beautiful weather here in Colorado, and Anna and Dad spent some time outside today (thus the hat).
March 17th, 2007
Today we journeyed down to Children’s Hospital to have Anna’s cast made. It was a tramatic experience for Anna (and for me! She looked at me as if to say, “Why are you letting them do this to me?”). For those of you who do not know, we are casting Anna’s right hand to encourage the use of her left. During the next three weeks we will be doing intensive therapy using her left hand. We’ll be attending therapy at Children’s three days a week and we’ll be continuing our normal therapy sessions here at home. Needless to say it will be a busy time for us.
This weekend will be an adjustment period during which Anna will hopefully become more accustomed to having the cast on. Seeing her with her dominant hand out of the picture today made me realize how far we’ve come, and yet how far we have to go in regards to the functioning of her left hand. It was something of a reality check for me. I think it caught me unawares. Her evaluation at Children’s added to that reality check; the doctors/therapists spelled out what Anna’s issues were in a rather clinical way. It all sounded so negative. As to be expected, they were evaluating her from this point in time, without regard to how far Anna has come in the last 4 months since we started her therapy. For some reason it was hard to hear.
As if getting your dominant hand casted were not enough, we had Anna’s 12-month check-up today (and no, I didn’t plan on having both of these events happen on the same day!). Everything about her development looks good. She still doesn’t weigh enough for us to be able to turn her car seat around (darn). In fact, the doctor was still a bit concerned about her weight gain. She’s fallen into the 25th percentile in her weight - 19 lbs. 12 oz. She holding strong to the 90-95th percentile for height, however (31 1/2 inches). Some of her meager weight gain may be due to the fact that she’s had a stomach/intestinal bug this last week. I won’t go into detail…suffice it to say, carseats are not meant to handle vomit. Anna also has developed another ear infection in her right ear. So we’re back on the antibiotics. Silver lining: no shots today because she has an infection.
I posted a ton of pictures from Anna’s birthday party and Granny and Papa Rex’s visit to Colorado. I’ll work on posting some short movies of Anna eating her cake and such.
March 16th, 2007
One year ago today you were born, little one, and what an amazing year it’s been.
You’ve learned so much in these past few months: How to breathe, how to cry, how to nurse, how to burp, how to roll over, how to sit without falling over, how to sleep through the night, how to laugh, how to babble, how to giggle when tickled, how to drink from a bottle, how to say mama and dada, how to make the signs for food, milk, and the cat, how to sit up all by your self, how to crawl, how to stand up, how to make friends, how to play with toys, how to read books, how to grow teeth and just a very little bit of hair, how to snuggle, how to eat grown-up food, how to find your way across the room, how to cruise around the coffee table, how to climb stairs, how to clap, how to pick up things with your left hand, how to wave like a princess, how to blow big smacking kisses across the room, how to give hugs, how to give kisses, and how to light up an entire room with your beautiful smile.
And we’ve learned so much too: How to give birth, how to change diapers, how to give baths, how to dress tiny babies in tiny clothes, how to install car seats and baby gates, how to nurse, how to burp a baby, how to make a little girl smile, how to function on very little sleep, how to make a bottle, how to make breakfast, how to teach a baby to stretch, clap, sit up, eat, crawl, stand, sleep through the night, and climb stairs, how to cope with the fears all parents face, how to sing, how to distract, how to be more organized and not worry about when we aren’t, how to be more patient, how to love each other when we’re under fire, and how to love you, unconditionally, always and forever, for you are the most wonderful and rewarding thing in our lives.
Thank you, Anna, for joining our family and for and teaching us so much. Happy birthday, dearest girl. We love you.
March 15th, 2007
Anna’s Granny and Papa from Kansas are visiting us! Anna’s 1st Birthday party is this weekend and they made the drive out to Colorado to help us celebrate. I can’t believe that the little Miss will be one year old! We’ve said it before, but Neal and I agree that it has been both the longest and shortest year ever. So much has happened since this time last year, yet it seems like only yesterday that she entered this world.
Next Wednesday Anna and I will be making a trip down to Children’s Hospital in Denver to see if she is a good candidate for a special type of therapy. We’re meeting with a rehab doctor and a hand specialist. The therapy regimen is called Constraint-Induced Therapy and involves the casting of her unaffected arm for a period of 2-3 weeks. While her right arm is casted, we’ll be doing intensive therapy with her left hand/arm. This type of therapy has shown great promise in children with some form of hemiparesis, and there are several studies that document this success in the literature. We’ve tried some home-grown constraint therapy using a couple of very thick socks or a ski mitten placed over her right hand/arm; it is amazing what she can and will do with her left hand if her right hand is out of the picture. We’re hoping that this therapy will help Anna realize that her left hand can do things, too!
If Anna is deemed to be a good candidate for this therapy, we’ll probably start on the 19th. This is potentially going to be a tough time for Anna (and for us, too). I’m hoping she tolerates the cast and is still able to do many of the things she does now. I’ll keep you posted on our progress!
March 6th, 2007
It seems like it has been awhile since I posted new pictures. We also have a few movies to show.
Anna has been doing some great things with her left hand! The first movie is of Anna crawling (almost 3MB). It was taken about 5 days ago and she has already improved immensely in her speed and synchronicity. The video is pretty grainy because of the poor lighting conditions.
The other two movies were captured this evening. Anna and I have been working on using her left hand to grasp things. She has difficulties rotating her arm and hand inward, which makes feeding herself with her left hand quite diffcult. Using a long cookie or a spoon, we’ve been working on maintaining her grasp and rotating her arm and hand to get the cookie or spoon to her mouth. She’s caught on and now wants to feed herself yogurt with her left hand (2.5MB). Notice I’m not constraining her right hand at all.
The last clip shows Anna banging on the table with her left hand (almost 2MB). This is the first time Anna has banged repeatedly (and rapidly) on anything using her left hand. Actually, it is the first time she’s done anything that rapidly with her left hand. Of course we’re not neurologists, but we feel this shows that her brain is working to send multiple, rapid signals to her left hand. The video is pretty grainy because of the poor lighting conditions.
Anna is such an amazing little girl. Neal and I often find ourselves on the verge of happy tears when we witness her doing new things with her left hand. She’s truly come so far! Now if only she’d grow some more hair… 
February 28th, 2007
Anna has finally given up the commando crawl in favor of all-fours crawling! She’s also managed to synchronize her arms and legs and is crawling reciprocally. And now she’s working on speed! Yeah Anna!
Another big accomplishment: Anna has learned how to get down from a standing position. No longer does she scream and cry at us or the ladies at daycare to help her down when she doesn’t want to stand any longer. She can do it all by herself. Yet another move towards independence.
February 23rd, 2007
Anna is wide awake and ready to start her day an hour and a half early.
The joys of parenthood abound.
February 20th, 2007
A couple of new things to report regarding Ms. Anna. First of all, you may have noticed that Anna is wearing a splint on her left hand in some of her pictures. They call it a Joe Cool strap and it is designed to keep Ann’s thumb out of the palm. Anna generally tucks her thumb under her fingers when she makes a fist and it often stays there even when she opens her hand. This makes it incredibly difficult for her to grab anything. The splint prevents this from happening. She doesn’t seem to mind wearing it and it does what it is supposed to do. In our opinions (and that of her therapist), she is better able to grasp things with her left hand now that her thumb isn’t in the way.
We took Anna in for an RSV follow up and weigh in on Friday. Fortunately, her ears have cleared up and she looks to be in good health. The other good news is Anna’s weight gain. She gained over 1 lb. in a little less than a month! Anna has turned into a heavy-hitter when it comes to eating. I’m amazed at how much that little body can put away.
And lastly…a little rant on my part. I hate insurance companies. My employer is switching one of our insurance plans (the one Anna and I are on) to a vastly reduced plan with very very few doctors in our area. We’re now supposed to drive to Aurora (southeast Denver metro area) for Anna’s therapy and to visit a hospital. In its stead they are offering a crapppy plan with a high deductible. Grrr…. And we’re also having to jump through several hoops to get some of Anna’s therapy approved by our current insurance plan. Universal healthcare…I’ll vote for it in a heartbeat. You shouldn’t have to look at your finances to determine whether or not you can give your family the care they deserve/need.
I’m hoping to post a few pics soon…Anna had some spaghetti today. It was a mess, but she certainly had a good time.
February 11th, 2007
Josie and Henry came over to visit Anna and me today. Jo and I decided that both kinds were kind of stinky, so we thought it would be fun to give them a bath together. They had a BLAST! There are a few pictures I uploaded of the event. We also were able to shoot a short movie (a little over 4MB).
We also uploaded earlier this week a couple of pictures of Anna in her new felt cowgirl hat. She received it along with a whole bunch of new outfits from her great uncle Mike and Julie. Thanks so much!!
February 8th, 2007
Tara called me this morning at work to tell me that we’ve passed two major milestones in one day:
1. Anna sat up all on her own! (This is the first time either of us have actually seen her do it).
2. Anna actually crawled. On all fours. Not far. Not fast. But she crawled. And then she did it again for our therapist.
I’m at work, and swamped, but I had to share. I’m so incredibly happy! I think any parent understands the emotions we’re feeling, but this milestone in particular has become so much more important for us because of Anna’s CP.
Ms. Anna: You are truly amazing.
January 25th, 2007
As I’ve mentioned in past posts, we’re working on getting Anna to sit up from being on her tummy. Yesterday morning I put Anna in her crib for a nap. About an hour later I went in to get her because I could hear her playing and chatting away. I walked in and was pleasantly surprised to see Ms. Anna sitting up in her crib waving at me! Now that she knows she CAN do it, I’m hoping we’ll be seeing more and more of her sitting up.
I took this opportunity to work on a little child-proofing. Since I KNOW Anna can pull herself to standing if she’s in a sitting position I thought it would be a good idea to lower the mattress in her crib. I’ve also been installing covers on all the electrical outlets. She’s very interested in drawers and cabinets lately, so I’m going to be installing some of those cabinet/drawer lock-thingies soon.
January 23rd, 2007
The title pretty much sums up the time since our last post.
We spent Christmas in Kansas this year. This was Anna’s first Christmas, which was actually a lot of fun. She had no idea what she was doing, but she enjoyed ripping paper off. Not so that she could see what was under the paper, but so that she could eat the paper. We had to keep a pretty close eye on her with all that paper laying around. We had a great time visiting with all the grandparents, aunts/uncles and cousins!
Due to the snow storm in Colorado and Kansas over the weekend of the New Years holiday, we stayed in Kansas a couple of days longer than anticipated. We had a room booked at the Burlington High School gymnasium, but thankfully we didn’t need to use it! We returned to Longmont on Monday night to find that our driveway was completely shoveled! Thank you Andy and Barbara (our next door neighbors). However, the plows finally came though on our street and deposited a large mound of icy snow in front of our driveway. After an 11 hour drive we had to dig ourselves out of the mound so that we could pull the car into the driveway. Not something you want to do at 11pm. Especially considering we all had to return to work the very next day!
Anna made it to daycare on Tuesday and Wednesday that week and by the weekend she was sick AGAIN! On Saturday she had a very high fever and on Sunday she had labored breathing. We interrupted our Christmas with Neal’s parents and cousin Sandra to take Anna to the urgent care clinic on the advice of our on-call doctor. The on-call doc said that we should begin to be concerned when her respirations per minute reached 40-50; Anna’s were 80 when we left the house and 96 when we reached urgent care! While there they had her do a breathing treatment, which is a lot of fun with an infant (NOT). They also tested her for RSV and influenza. Unfortunately she tested positive for RSV. If you haven’t had a child recently, you may not know that RSV is a potentially very dangerous respiratory virus for babies. It manifests itself as a cold for adults and older children, but it wreaks havoc on the ability of infants to get enough oxygen. It is also highly contagious, so no daycare for at least a week.
Anna was KO’d for that entire week. She didn’t begin to feel better until the following Friday. Even then she was still not her usual jovial self! The fever continued throughout the week. She developed two ear infections. And breathing remained an issue. Every night for a week we gave her a breathing treatment using a home nebulizer (again, a lot of fun). And then the cough started. It was just a terribly horrible week. Anna slept with me because the doctors wanted us to monitor her breathing; Neal slept on the couch. In sum, no one slept very well. On Monday we went back to the doctor to see if she would be cleared for daycare starting this last Tuesday. Unfortunately, she was still wheezing and rattling so we were told to wait for a couple of days. To top off that fabulous time, Anna gave me her virus. So now I’m coughing all night!
Last but not least, Anna is cutting more teeth! She now has 3 on the bottom, her two front teeth on top are coming in nicely, and she’s started to cut one of her first year molars. Needless to say, she is a drooling queen and has been quite fussy lately. It’s hard to tell whether she is fussy because of her sickness or because of the teeth. Maybe it’s a combination of both.
I posted some new pictures as well. I want to upload some new movies, but I need to use Neal’s desktop to do that. I’ll try to do that sometime this weekend. We have a couple of really good ones.
Oh, and on the therapy front, Anna is cruising around on the furniture now. We still aren’t hands-and-knees crawling, but we are continuing to work on that. I’m of the opinion now that she will walk before she crawls (on her hands and knees). She’s also doing a great job pulling to stand on her own. Now, if we could just get her to sit up from commando crawling, we’d be in business. Her OT today was absolutely amazed with Anna’s use of her left arm. She had expected a bit of a regression given the fact that Anna was out of commission for more than a week, but she was pleasantly suprised to find that Anna had actually gained skills. Baby girl truly is amazing. We’ve got some interesting therapy news on the horizon. I won’t elaborate now because it is still in the works, but I’ll be sure to share when we know more.
January 18th, 2007
On Thursday Anna had her 9-month check-up. She’s 29 inches long (still in the 95 percentile) and 18 1/2 lbs. The doctor is a bit concerned about her weight. Up until this appointment Anna was following a perfect growth curve. She’s fallen off her curve pretty significantly and the doctor wants to keep an eye on her to make sure her weight corrects itself. She’s been sick off and on for some time now, so this may be the reason for her smallish increase in weight. It could also be that she is using more calories due to all her exercise and increased mobility. The doctor wants her to come back in about a month for a weigh-in. For the time being we’ll see if we can’t increase her caloric intake.
Other than her weight Anna is developing on track in all ways (except, of course, those areas that involve the use of the left side of her body). She’s babbling like a brook lately and has started to wave. We also suspect that we are seeing Anna’s first sign - food! She doesn’t make the sign too consistently yet, but we definitely feel she is making it deliberately. It is quite a trip to think that she’s communicating with us! Anna has cut her 3rd tooth. We suspected she was teething, but I was focused on her top gums (typically babies cut the top 4 after the bottom 2). It was a total surprise to me when I noticed the top of a tooth on her bottom gum!
Anna’s therapy is going well, too. She’s started to pull up to a kneeling position and often to standing (with a little help from Mom or Dad). This evening she suceeded in pulling up to standing from a sitting position all on her own! Now if she could just get from lying to sitting, there’d be no stopping her. She’s pretty much obsessed with pulling up and standing now. Much to her chagrin, we’re very much still working on the crawling-thing, as it is a keystone skill for her. You don’t usually think of crawling as more than a means to get around, but it is MUCH MUCH more. The hands and knees position facilitates sitting up, kneeling, pulling up, etc. etc. We are working on strengthening her left arm so that it can support her weight when she’s in the hands and knees position. For those that haven’t seen Anna lately and wonder whether she’s mobile at all, she IS getting around by commando-crawling. She uses her arms (and legs) to drag her body around. And she’s fast! We’re in the process of installing baby gates to keep her from taking a nasty spill down the stairs. Talk about some strength…try pulling your body around with just your arms (and a little help from your legs).
December 15th, 2006
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