Busy, Busy, Busy

Yesterday, Jackson had his 15 month check up. The doctor is happy with his steady weight gain and projects that he will catch up to a normal weight at around 2 years of age. Dr. Setter agreed with Dr. Gus from the preemie clinic and referred us to PT, OT, and Speech Therapy. Dr. Setter is also concerned about Jack's multiple ear infections, so he is also referring us to an ENT for possible tube placement. He thinks that once Jack gets the tubes put in and the fluid drains out, then Jack will be able to hear better and start talking.
This morning, Jack had urological surgery. At 6am, we got to St. Francis, and shortly after arrival they gave Jack some "Giggle Juice", which made him very loopy. They then took him to surgery where they gave him gas to put him to sleep and then put in an IV and started the surgery. It took about 45 minutes, and then Dr. Miller came out to the waiting room and told me the surgery was a success! When I got to recovery, Jack was still very groggy and starving! He ate 3 bottles of "sugar water" and once his O2 saturation was back to normal we got to take him home. For the rest of the day he slept off the anesthesia and was still very comfortable because the local anesthetic that the doctor gave hadn't worn off yet. We'll see how he does tomorrow....

Developmental Preemie Clinic

Yesterday Jack had his appointment with the developmental preemie clinic. The audiologist checked his hearing, which was fine. Dr. Gus wasn't concerned at all about his slow weight gain. In fact, he didn't even recommend we see the dietician. He was happy with Jack's progress, and again voiced to me how lucky we are to have such a healthy and happy baby born so soon, though he is concerned about Jack's speech and the fact that he's not voicing any consonants. He's also concerned about Jack not being able to sit up on his own yet. The physical therapist, Micah, spent quite a bit of time with him and compared his progress on her charts, which shows he has completely skipped the sitting up milestone and gone directly to the crawling and pulling up milestone. She said when he pulls up, he uses his arms and legs instead of any trunk muscles, and when he sits, he has to prop up on one arm. She showed me some exercises to encourage him to develop those trunk muscles, and Dr. Gus is going to contact our pediatrician about getting Jack referred to speech therapy, physical therapy, and occupational therapy.

In other news....Jack has gained almost a pound in the past two weeks!!! Under the advice of my very knowledgeable and helpful sister-in-law, Kelly, we took some steps in increasing Jack's calorie intake each day and it has worked wonderfully! YAY!