Neonatal Follow-Up

Thank you to all that said any extra prayers for Annabel - her head has indeed grown, it measured 1 cm larger than what the nurse at the 15 month appointment measured it and is trending very similar to Mady's. What a huge relief! That nurse we had at the 15-month was terrible, all three of their lengths were way off, showing that they "shrunk" in a week and the only head measurement she got even close to right was Mady's. Needless to say I called and complained and asked for her to be re-trained, it is unexceptable to be off by as much as she was! And even worse was messing up the shots, yikes!

So the neonatal appointment went well over all, other than that Annabel completely ignored the doctor and wanted nothing to do with the testing. Somehow I just knew that would happen. I wonder if she's having some stranger anxiety now? We did have our favorite fellow from the NICU (Rebecca) evaluate them so it was great to see her! She couldn't believe how awesome they are doing. They were tested for the 11-15 month range so with their adjusted age they're towards the low end of the spectrum, with Mady and Johnathan testing around 11 months. They did mention that in the future if we wanted to bring them seperately it might be better so they won't be distracted by their siblings and can get a more accurate read of them. We're not going to do this for the 18 month (it's too hard to take all that time off) but for their 2 year (which is more in-depth) we will.

Even with Annabel not cooperating they were quite impressed with her and Dr. Carlson is still very optimistic for her. They love that her tone hasn't gotten any worse and that her left hand is actually improving. Our next goal for her is to get her to sit and play, completely unsupported but it still may take her months to develop the trunk control to do it. Basically, it appears that Annabel will get there physically, it's just going to take her a lot longer and be a lot more work to get her there than for the other two. That's probably the hardest part for us is that we see the others progressing so quickly and although we know Annabel is still developing and making great strides, it just takes her so much longer so we start to worry when we don't really need to.

At the end of the appointment Rebecca printed their growth charts that has their data plotted to their adjusted age so that is great to see! All of them are on the charts (generally 25th to 50th percentile) adjusted except Mady's head circumference.