Eye of the tiger

I'm a morning baby!

This week, I’m thankful for therapists. Since the day we brought Calder home, every practitioner has stressed the importance of incorporating about 45-60 minutes per day of tummy time, which is necessary to strengthen the core, the neck, the arms, and is helpful for preventing flatness of the head (and as a preemie, Calder has already had a LOT of time on his back instead of inside my tummy) – tummy time has a lot going for it. Knowing that tummy time may not be a favorite activity, our ped suggested starting with five minutes at a time and working up. Unfortunately, Calder typically screamed bloody murder the very second you put him on the ground. Making it past 30 seconds was a huge feat, let alone five minutes. Every once in a while we would get lucky, and he would make it a few minutes.

Enter Cristiane, our physical therapist through Early Intervention. I was astounded when she had him on his tummy for several minutes, easily. In fact, I think he enjoyed it! Calder loves new faces and new friends, and he took to her quickly. We’ll have a PT appointment every week. She told us to practice with Calder every day (sometimes easier said than done, but unless we have other doctor appointments to fit in, we do), and that by next week, she expected to see him holding his head up for longer periods.

pushing, pushing ...

okay, i had a little help,
but check this out!

c'mon in, give me a smooch.

loves hangin' with Dad

I also took Calder in for his first speech therapy session with Anne, the same SLP who saw him for the swallow study (we are very familiar with Children’s National now, too – we visit pretty regularly with five different departments there so far.) What we worked on was very reminiscent of what we had been doing in the NICU until we had to quit: we reintroduced the bottle using a slow/preemie nipple like was used in the study, discussed pacing and arranged a plan for slowly incorporating the bottle into the feeds. We are going to start by using the bottle with every daytime feed, two ounces only (he takes a little over four total), and never allow him to work on those two ounces for more than 30 minutes. Anne is great, very friendly, and she spoke highly of Children’s Hospital in Cincinnati and Corinne’s program there, which was nice to hear.

Lots to work on in the coming week with our little monkey.

resting up!