A little PT, a little ST

Ari was on fire today, as his Mimi says. He wore himself out, in fact. He even got put in jail - yes, he's now in a crib with high side rails because he thought it would be fun to lay sideways and throw things off the bed, and maybe eventually roll of the bed himself...

Aside from a genuine return to his lovely ari-ness, my guess is he's a little hyper/anxious from tapering down the methadone and coming off the clonidine. He's quite charming and funny and loving to play, but gets his feelings hurt very easily and has struggled all day with sleeping about 10-15 minutes and then popping wide awake. Finally tonight he passed out exhausted. I'm spending the night, so here's to hoping it's a long deep sleep:)

Ari got some PT today. He's throwing himself back quite a bit and not wanting to sit on his own, but he worked on sit-to-stand, a bit of walking, and transitioning in and out of positions on the floor. I was impressed. Especially impressed that he was happy to work for toys rather than flavor burst goldfish:).

Speech/feeding therapy is going well, but it's looking like his swallowing issues are more severe than they were before he got sick. They had predicted this, and only time will tell how long-lasting this will be. He's doing best with honey-thickened milk out of a level 3 Dr. Brown nipple. We tried just sticking with the honey bear straw cup since we had been working on getting him off the bottle, but he just wasn't taking in enough milk, so we brought the bottle back. He downed 4 oz, but aspirates on the nectar consistency, so he gets honey thickness now. Applesauce went well yesterday, but we had to give him an empty spoon every 3rd bite to force him to clear the food out of his mouth. Oh well. It's still something. After 3 milk feeds today the docs decided they didn't want to push it, so the rest of the day was feeding by NG tube and they'll discuss what's next tomorrow morning.

All in all, Ari is still doing very well. Feeding issues is what kept Ari in the NICU for a month after birth and we knew it would likely be an issue for his recovery in this journey. You just cross your fingers and hope for the best.

It is awesome to see more and more of my son return with every day. Sean caught a super-great video of him today. Unfortunately...I'm at the hospital and can't post it, but I'll get it up sometime tomorrow when I'm off campus. So for tonight, it's throwback Thursday to another 7 month old baby picture. Same personality and smile as he's got now. I'm loving it!



Love to all,
Dorothy

Comments

  1. So glad to hear he's doing better! -- Susan V.

    ReplyDelete
  2. So glad to hear he's doing better! -- Susan V.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment