Appointment News...

First of all, let me start off by saying that we don't have to go back to Cincy until Jaime's one! Woohoo! OK, this seems really far off, but really it's 3 1/2 months away.
Now for stats: Jaime is 15lbs 8oz, just like he was on his home scale. He's just about 26 1/2 inches long. He's still sitting at 3% for height and weight for his adjusted age. Dr. Haberman said that we really need to see some significant growth in the next 3 to 4 months. She has added Beneprotein to his diet, in hopes that this helps. She said it doesn't always work for kids, but it's worth a shot. Plus, he is not restricted to any particular foods at this point, so we're aloud to try anything, as long as he tolerates it!
Cognitively, he's right on target for an 8 1/2 month old, perhaps a little above, however, his gross motor skills, not so much! In fact, he is much further behind then they would have thought he'd be, even accounting for his adjusted age and his 2 surgeries. The longest part of our appointment was therapy. Ann (SP) and Amy (OT) worked with Jaime for a long time. Jaime ate a graham cracker and did awesome with it. Tom and I were surprised because textures really freak him out, but he did well. We're thinking that using the food net so much lately is helping. I can't wait to get home and buy him baby puffs to try! Those will also allow for him to work on his fine motor skills...as he will have to pinch his fingers to pick them up.
Getting back to his gross motor skills and torticollis, all of which he is so far behind. I told the girls that I am less than thrilled with my home therapists, they are going to write a treatment plan for us to follow and try to find us new therapists in town. (We'll let them be the bad guys.) I know that Jaime is behind and I do work with him on stuff that the Early Intervention therapists show me, but there is only so much that I can do without assistance. I find our "normal" therapists to be lazy...clearly Jaime hasn't come very far with their assistance, in fact, as Ann pointed out, seems like Jaime may have regressed a bit since his last NICU admit. I tend to agree with her. It's so frustrating! We'll get him fixed up, though!
Another thing the girls noticed, which was talked about during his last NICU stay was how much energy Jaime uses during therapy. If on a monitor, we probably would have seen him start to desat because his eyes were tearing and starting to get blue circles around them. Dr. Haberman suggested putting him on O2 for therapy and anytime he's going to do something that will exert him (tummy time, sitting...). She said it won't hurt him and it may even help him grow if he doesn't have to expend the energy to breathe.
Jaime does play well side-lined. Which is something that was suggested to us. This way his cognitive, social and fine motor skills will continue to develop properly. The gross motor skills will take a while. I mentioned yesterday that Jaime will not put weight on his left foot, well, he was checked, nothing obvious appears to be wrong. He, once again, has everyone puzzled...way to go, Jaime! HA! We're going to watch it and do some joint stretches, as I was shown today, we'll see if that helps, if not, we'll investigate further. The way he "holds" his leg up indicates that there may be something wrong, but as I said, we're going to see if stretching it works.
Now on to the big-little thing, really, his incision. His x-ray indicated that his liver is elevated, but from what we were told today, the right diaphragm will ALWAYS be elevated, so the liver will never quite be in the right spot. Dr. Tiao came to see Jaime....frazzled, as usual, he said if something is wrong, we're getting a new surgeon! HA! Anyway, he felt around for a while, it is not 100% clear if he has an incisional hernia or if it's just weakened muscle. There is one area that may indicate an incisional hernia. The only true test would be a CT scan, in which Dr. Tiao isn't crazy about doing at this time. He wants to give the diaphragm some time to "work" and "grow" before opening Jaime up again. This is something that will happen down the road...1 to 3 years, unless there's a problem, of course, in which case Dr. Tiao will have us transferred down to Cincy right away.
So, that sums up our visit to Cincy. Nothing too shocking, we're just disappointed about Jaime's development more than anything. In due time, I suppose!
We are currently heading into downtown Columbus to visit with Titi for a bit before heading to snowy Cleveland!

Here are some pictures from the last 24 hours.

Love that Jaime is holding the elephant's trunk!

Jared and his game.

Lounging in the hotel room.

Jared and I went swimming this morning.

Jaime asleep after playing with his new blocks from Jeanie (Ryan's-LCDH Mom) Thanks, Jeanie it was nice to see you a few minutes, next time you guys need to come North!

Have a nice night, all!