He still needs some positioning aids, but it seems to fit him pretty good. It's definitely a new thing trying to get him in and out of the car. No more putting him in his seat in the house, waiting for him to get settled, and then leaving. Now we carry him out to the car and put him in his seat.
We haven't been to vent clinic since August. We got to skip a month for once! And then of course, Colton got sick. He was on oxygen for about a week and a half. He finally came off of it again last night, but then had to be on it again today for about 5 hours. As of right now he is off the oxygen again, but we will see if that lasts. We started him on Albuterol treatments every 4 hours during the day to see if that would help his breathing. We think it has.
Our biggest achievements in the last month have come on the physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech fronts. We started doing some physical therapy at Spiece fieldhouse in the therapy pool. Colton loves it! It allows him to not have to work as hard against gravity to move his spine and legs. We are hoping to be able to do this a couple of times a month.
We are now reaching for things with both hands, switching hands with toys and being able to chose between two toys. Today for the first time, he reached for me with both hands. He is in love with his little elephant named deli. We should have his bath chair and Special Tomato in the next couple of weeks! So excited about those! We are talking so much now. Almost constantly. It's so great to hear all of the baby cooing around here. We laugh and giggle too :)
Colton had a swallow study on September 2nd. We found out that we are making progress. We can get him to swallow when we are working on it at home, but he wouldn't do it for the swallow study. The front part of his mouth is working well, but the back part that moves food down the esophagus doesn't work well right now. To get this part to work we need to work more on his tongue and get him to use it more. We are going to continue to give him little amounts of food on a spoon so that he can taste every new thing we give him. We are slowly working up on the food that he's been exposed to. He's getting quite a variety now! I am still working on trying to figure out his blended diet. I bought a book that is supposed to help with figuring all that out, I just haven't had time to read through it!
Colton also had a visit to Midwest Ortho last week. He was scanned for possibly getting a helmet to help fix the shape of his head. Here is a picture of the final scan.
As you can see, his head is pretty narrow. This is actually pretty classic lissencephaly. The problem is that Colton's soft spot on the front of his head may be closed. If that is the case, we may not be able to use the helmet to reshape his head. In order to see if his soft spot is closed, Colton is getting a CT on Thursday. Here's to hoping that it's still open and we can do the helmet. The other piece of equipment that was suggested is called a TLSO. Not sure what it stands for, but its supposed to help support Colton's torso so the he can work on head control. It's made of really thin plastic with a liner. Super excited about that as well.
The big change in the house is that Colton no longer sleeps in our room in the pack and play.We were able to get the den repainted and all the furniture moved. Here are pictures:
He sleeps so much better in his crib and in his own room. We no longer have to move him out into the living room in the morning when his nurses get here. He gets to sleep in until his breakfast. It's so much better for him.
This month we get to see Dr. Bader the geneticist, more feeding clinic, vent clinic on October 1, and finally going to the dermatologist. Hoping that he has some ideas about Colton's skin. He is constantly itching. Should be an interesting month!
