Blessed With Good News

Wow, was this ever a busy week with appointments and this next week won't be any easier! Friday morning I took Johnathan to Pulmonary - their exact words were that he is the star performer for a white male born at 26 weeks gestation! The doctor just can't get over how well the babies are doing growing, gaining weight, that no one came home on oxygen and that no one has been sick. Johnathan will have a lung function test done in 3 months to compare his lung performance to a fully developed baby of his size. They expect that everything will look great, it will just give an objective confirmation to what we're seeing subjectively. He will have this test repeated every 6 months up until the age of 3 so this initial will be a good baseline. If everything keeps heading in the direction he's going so far, he may not have the diagnosis of chronic lung disease for life, it will just be a history of it. As far as asthma, being a micropreemie and especially born at the gestation he was he had a high chance from the get-go (the girls also have a chance), let alone the hereditary factor, however, with how well Johnathan is doing, if he does develop asthma it will probably be more from the hereditary factor than from the prematurity. We will know better if this is going to be a problem once he starts crawling and walking, exerting more energy.

Friday afternoon my Mom and I took all three for their audiology tests. The girls did great and are right on where they should be for their adjusted age so the plan is to have them re-tested every 6 months for the first few years. Johnathan also did great with his hearing aids in, responding as well as the girls did! According to our audiologist Johnathan does hear himself talk, it's just muted compared to what we hear. Because we got him going with the hearing aids so early he really shouldn't be behind (he's currently equal with the girls, even a little ahead of Annabel) with speech development and he shouldn't have a different sounding voice as some people do who have hearing aids. Johnathan's own hearing aids finally came in so he's now outfitted with his tan ones instead of the bright blue. We were able to get great impressions this time so hopefully his next set of molds will last awhile! Because he should start tapering off a bit with growing we'll soon be able to go every 5 weeks instead of 3 for new impressions so that will be good!

This weekend was a lot of fun. B.J. and I got some good play time and some good rest time with the babies. We hardly ever get to nap with them so I was finally able to do that with Johnathan today and it was great!!

Mady has been on the move and has even started getting her tummy off on the ground, on her arms and legs and making crawl motions forward! You can see how great she's doing being on her tummy now. B.J. was coaxing her to crawl to him and at one point the dogs both layed down next to him, one on each side, as if all three were coaxing. It was so cute!! She also has the perfect position down for getting in to the sitting position, she just needs to strengthen her back muscles to get there. We now have to put up barriers (the boppys) so she doesn't get where she shouldn't - she gets so frustrated and so mad when we do this!

All three babies have been jabbering like crazy lately and giggling a lot! Johnathan is loving being on his feet and jumping. He has this great deep tummy laugh that you can't help but laugh along with him! Annabel has really been amazing us lately with her focusing, her jabbering, and she's been using her left hand quite a bit! We are so proud of our three little fighters!

This week we take all three babies to the opthamologist Thursday a.m. and then to their 9 month well baby in the p.m. and then on Friday Early On PT comes in the a.m. and then Johnathan and Mady have helmet appointments in the p.m. that Annabel will be tagging along for. The good news is that after this week things really do start to die down appointment-wise!