Slightly better on growth

CHRONOLOGICAL AGE: 14.5 MONTHS
ADJUSTED AGE: 10.5 MONTHS
CURRENT WEIGHT: 14 LBS, 15.9 OUNCES
CURRENT LENGTH: 26.25 INCHES

The weather finally turned in Dallas which means two things: cooler temperatures and changing leaves (which we love) and RSV season isolation (which we don't like at all). Truman continues to be everywhere all at the same time with crawling and pulling up. He has learned, however, how to get down from pulling up without falling, which is a huge relief for us -- a lot fewer bumps on his head and fewer boo-boos to console. We've also finally installed baby gates to the stairs and the area with the cat box and cat bowls, so that makes him a lot easier to keep up with, too.

He continues to "talk" more and more, and although he is focusing on the same syllables, "da" and "ga," he seems to be using them more every day. Ben says he talks a lot more when I'm around than when it's just the two of them. Hmm ... wonder where he gets that from? With only one word and only two syllables, along with the failure to drink from a cup, hold a bottle, or eat any non-crunchy finger foods, we've been given an Rx to start weekly speech therapy.


Truman is currently working on four teeth across the top. It took some Tylenol and three tries over the course of an hour to get him down to sleep to stay Tuesday night, so I think they are definitely bothering him. However, in the sleep world, he seems to have hit a milestone. He has gone more than a week now without his middle of the night nursing session. Yippee!!


Truman had his annual therapy re-evaluation on Monday. We will get a full report later, but initially Beth said that he has sensory integration disorder / issues. Basically that means that he can't organize all the sensory inputs coming into his brain and thus has trouble paying attention to anything without getting overwhelmed or tries to engage multiple senses at once since he can't figure out how to process one at a time. She is recommending moving therapy to twice a week to work on this (and whatever else the final report shows) to make sure that the sensory issues don't interfere with learning. In the world of micro-preemies, I don't think I even know any who don't have sensory integration disorder. Particularly with micropreemies, when your brain is forced to interact with the world before it's ready, it tends to go a little haywire in the process (thus, the brain bleeds way back in week 1). Although we would love to get a clean report on Truman, we know that's not going to happen, and I am reminded over and over as to how many bullets we have dodged and how fortunate we are to have great resources available, the means (i.e. good insurance) to afford them, and a pediatrician who supports a proactive response. Fortunately, Truman's new insurance will cover unlimited therapy.

Truman had a check-up yesterday, and he has improved to 8 grams of weight gain a day -- slightly better, but not good. We spent some time discussing what could be done to help him grow more, and we concluded that we are really doing all we can and that Truman may continue to struggle for a long time -- or perhaps always -- with growth. It just seems that he has a max volume of food that he takes in, whether in liquid or solid form, and that we all we can do is pack it as full of calories as possible.

Dr. Suterwala was not surprised at all about the sensory integration disorder evaluation by the therapists and gave us a 2007 study out of the UK on 23-25 weekers who are now 6 and they are doing now that they have started school. It talked about some of the sensory-related issues along with other cognitive and motor issues. It's not the most encouraging of studies, but we want to be informed because now we are entering into uncharted areas beyond just whether milestones are being hit, but how they are being hit and behaviors, habits, delays that are not visible to or seem normal to the untrained eye. Because of the evaluation from Truman's therapists and our discussions, Dr. Suterwala has written orders for two occupational therapy sessions a week, one physical therapy session per week, and one speech therapy session a week.