I think I’m fairly overdue for an update on the progress of my miracle baby. Especially seeing as he somehow manages to turn one year old in less than a month. I have no idea how that happened.
The sad thing is that I’ve been so wrapped up in the day to day demands of meeting his needs as well as my own, that I’ve been horribly neglectful about documenting this kids life. Especially after the computer crash stole so many of his photos.
I had intended on privately writing monthly newsletters like Dooce does on her blog, but the best I’ve managed to do is a piece of notebook paper with an outline of his life scribbled down on it. I have to fix that. Maybe I’ll add “A Big Fat Scrapboook of Atti’s First year” onto my never ending crafty goal list.
This picture is already several weeks old, and it’s amazing to me how much he’s changed so quickly.
As of today he is 11 months old chronologically, which makes him eight months old adjusted age (based on when he *should* have been born), and his developmental age is all over the map. Speech and language he’s advanced. Hearing he’s nearly at adult levels. Eating he’s doing just great. Fine motor skills, he’s very weak. He can’t clap his toys together, he can’t hold his bottle, he won’t grasp small items. Gross motor skills he’s about three months behind even his adjusted age. He can’t sit up, he can’t crawl, he’s like an eighteen pound five month old.
When I just focus on the major milestones, it’s easy to let the news appear somewhat bleak. But I am surrounded by an amazing team of specialists who have trained me to notice all the many many many little milestones that come before the big ones. And those little milestones he’s slowly but surely checking off the list. He may not grasp toys and clap them together, but he’ll pick them up and bring them to his mouth, and when he wears his boots he’ll kick at the hardwood because he likes the sound it makes. He may not be able to sit quite yet, but he gets closer every day. He used to barely be able to hold up his head (in fairness, he does have a fairly gigantic melon), and now he can sit up with just a little support at his hips.
Every week he has visits from his Physical Therapist “Miss Jan,” the Occupational Therapist “Miss Alice,” and the Infant Stimulation Teacher “Miss Cathy,” and I can’t even begin to explain how I love these women. Because they love Atti. And they rejoice with me whenever he does a new trick. Whenever he gets infinitesimally closer to those big elusive goals we all celebrate because they understand how hard he has to work to get there and that the important thing is not how far he still has to go, but that he’s GOING.
So far we haven’t seen anything that we can nail down as being a sign of the dreaded CP. So far everything can be explained away by the fact of his prematurity, so we’re hopeful everything will stay OK.
He’s developed quite a bit of trouble with his eyes, which is really to be expected in a preemie of his age, so we’ve started having to patch his eye for two hours every day. It’s awful. He hates it and claws at his face whenever the patch is on, his sensitive little baby skin is all torn up from the sticky patches being ripped off of him every night. But we can already see improvement, so we swallow our instinct to grip him close and protect him from the awful thing and put on our drill sargeant personas.
We’ve made up elaborate backstories to try to make us feel better about the pain we’re subjecting our baby to for his own good. Bear calls him “Patches O’Hoolihan,” a barenuckle boxer from Boston circa 1890, blind in one eye from an unfair fight, but rumor has it it was really from an unsavory involvement with a local barmaid. Gosh we’re warped.