Growing, growing, growing

It's been a month since we updated. While things have been busy here, they have also been kind of the same so updating seemed like it might be boring. But since it's been a while I figured I would.

Amirah is doing great! At her last doctor's appointment (over a week ago) she weighed 16 1/2 pounds! She's now almost 11 months old! We can't believe how fast this year went. She has been evaluated by early intervention and overall for a baby that was born at such a low birth weight, spent about 9 months in the hospital, and is dealing with some medical limitations she did great. They placed her between 3-6 months for a variety of development assessments, and considering all that I just mentioned, and her adjusted age at the time of the evaluations we were so happy.

We start her PT and OT therapies this week and I know that this will help her tremendously. Her goals for the next six months included sitting unassisted, increasing her muscle tone, getting her to more age appropriate play. We have a swallow study scheduled for this week to see if she is in danger of aspirating food taken by mouth, and if she is cleared by this test we plan on starting her with some speech and food therapies.

Amirah is a joy to be around. She is a happy content baby. She loves to "talk" to her dad and her nurses, to blow raspberries and to flash heart melting smiles.

We have had a few scary moments. These usually envlove her turning blue and needing to be give a few breaths with a ambu bag. One time this happened while we were at the doctor's office and the nurse who was in the room with us got scared, and called in the pulmonologist in the office that day. By the time he came in Andy and I had Amirah calmed down and back to her happy pink self. The doctor walked in and said "oh, its you guys....your fine."

It's hard to explain how our life is. There are days when its a breeze and days it seem over whelming, There also times when its a little sad. Sad that we can't just throw Amirah in the car and go visiting, or out to dinner or to the store. It takes a lot of planning and at least two people to get her packed up and out the door, and at least 2 people need to be in the car. The car is a WHOLE other story. But I will just leave it as our Ford Focus is barely big enough to have a baby in, let alone a baby with a ton of medical equipment.

I guess I am just blabbering away at this point. So I will stop now. But before I do I just want to add that we had a FABULOUS Thanksgiving with my parents. The house was over flowing with love and warmth and I wouldn't trade my life for any thing.