Life Unexpected: Developmental Clinic

Gabriel had his second appointment with Dr. Fiero at the developmental clinic last week. Everything went good and they are happy with his progress. His fine motor skills and responsiveness (or his understanding and reacting) is about 12 to 13 months, everything else is pretty much aligned with his adjusted age. He needs to work on his speech, we are not getting enough consonant sounds. When Fiero asked me what sounds he is making and all I could think of were the g's and b's, and of course as soon as we left he starts talking up a storm. God forbid he throw mom a bone and do it when it needs to be done. It was a really long appointment, it lasted 5 hours. Manuel was there long enough to see him get weighed and measured. He was not happy that it took 2 hours to do that. He had to go to work early because he had reserves so he missed out on the whole thing. It was nice to see every one again. We missed Rosa the dietician last time and I love that she cares so much about Gabriel.

He weighed in at 15 lbs and measured 25 inches. Every doctor measures him differently. He was 26in at his 12 months appointment with Dr Lantry. Who knows. He is doing good with his crawling and like a champ showed off what he had just learned. His feet are turned out a little, so he needs to work on his hip strength. The physical therapist and occupational therapist said not to carry him on our hips, and to get some hip helpers (I think that's what they are called). They are basically bike shorts sewn together to keep his hips in and the fabric is stretchy so he can get some resistance when he tries to move his legs. They said I could try putting both his legs through one leg of pantyhose. I am still debating that one. Dr. Fiero is confident that he will be walking soon and will probably be discharged after his next visit. He also said that Gabriel is very intelligent and that made my day.

We are working on changing his diet a little. Since he is 3 months away from being off the breast milk, we are incorporating a feeding schedule and more spoon feeding. He loves to feed himself, to bad not much makes it in his mouth. We had to change his bottles because Madela does not make a fast flow nipple and his milk is too thick since he needs a thickener. It has never been easy to feed this kid.

He is a lot of fun and keeps us busy now that he is mobile. He is already testing the limits. He gets into stuff and we tell him "no" or "put it down" and he will, and then picks it back up, and then we go back in forth a few times. We either have to go get him or he will crawl away crying. He has also developed the habit of when he is mad or not getting his way, he puts his head down, keeps his arm at his side like limp noodles, and will ignore me. He is a handful and a half.