Isabelle is having a good week, she is still progressing with her smiles and her chatter. She’s smiling, laughing and chattering away most of the day. She has a rocking/vibrating chair that she really likes and she has figured out this week how to kick her feet in order to make the chair rock. Also, she has found her hand and thumb and thinks that it’s fun to knaw on her hand and sucks her thumb. Our current issue is she won’t take a descent nap during the day. She’s decided that she doesn’t want to miss out on anything during the day by taking a nap any longer than 20 minutes. So this week she hasn’t sleep more than 1.5 hour total during the day.
Yesterday we met with on occupational therapist who evaluated Isabelle to see what type of therapeutic exercises we could do with Isabelle to help her improve her gross motor skills. I will meet with a coordinator next week to find out what her recommendations are and what options will be the most beneficial for Isabelle. The OT did recommend encouraging Isabelle to use her right arm/hand because her right arm/hand is stiff compared to her left. She moves both legs equally so it’s just her right arm that she noticed tension in and that she needs to be moving more. So we are working with her on that and she does not want to do anything that is out of her comfort zone. We are also trying to encourage her to try and hold her head up more to strengthen the muscles in her neck so she can truly support her head by herself.
In all of the evaluation of Isabelle her vision has been noted as an area we need to have checked. Tomorrow we are meeting with a vision specialist to see if she has any exercises that might encourage Isabelle to try and focus on or track objects. Hopefully when I meet with the coordinator next week she will also have the vision specialist recommendations on what Isabelle needs in this area. We still have to go back to the ophthalmologist in a couple of weeks for him to exam her eyes and see if there are any issues with her optical nerves or if they just need strengthen. If you see Isabelle it appears that she is looking around or looking at you but we have not been able to get her to follow an object or focus on an object in her line of sight. So at this point we aren’t sure what or how well she can truly see.
I pray that Isabelle continues to improve on the skills she is developing and that she will continue to amaze the “professionals” who are evaluating her, I know that God is not finished with her and that she is already exceeding what we were told she would accomplish. We are quickly approaching our 6 month birthday.
4 years ago
