PT, OT and Two Weeks Since...

PT is hard work!

Today Aly met with her physical therapist, Beth. Physical therapy when you are 9 months old is basically playing with toys, practicing sitting, rolling over and pulling to stand. Beth said Aly is a little behind as far as her motor control for her age, which is to be expected after what happened and after she laid in bed for two weeks-ish. She's lost some muscle. Her legs are still pretty strong, but her arms are weak and so is her trunk. She is a little slow to react and takes a little extra time to catch on to toys. She still is a little wobbly and shaky with her head. She scores like a 6 month old on her evaluation. I'm just glad she only lost 3 months and not more. They are going to work with her about once a week for the next month and hopefully we will be able to work with her at home and get her caught up. She has an occupational therapy evaluation tomorrow. They will work a little more with her hands and see what she's lost there. Unfortunately I will miss that appointment, as Mama has to go back to work to bring home the bacon!

It has been two weeks since Aly went into the hospital, and almost 5 days since she got home. It doesn't seem possible that its only been that length of time, it feels like it should have been months. We talked to another family whose baby was in the hospital for over 100 days. I feel like we got away pretty easy. At some point I will have to go through my notes, and write down the story of her ten days in the hospital before I forget. Today was my first day at work since this all happened, and I told my co-workers the story and I realized how much you lose in just the two weeks. It may also be because while we were in the PICU, time just all jumbled together and I was running on little to no sleep.

Aly seems to enjoy being home. She's taking good naps about twice a day. She's sleeping pretty good at night too, usually only getting up once in the middle of the night. Last night, we checked on her around 4:30 am and she was lying in wait. I walk in the room and there is the unmistakeable aroma of poop. She had blown out of her diaper at some point and her pajamas were soaked. So we had to change her diaper, her pjs and give her a bath all in the early morning. She luckily did go back to sleep and let us sleep in until about 8. She had a good day with her Dad and they went for a walk around the neighborhood. Next week she will start going to Grandma's while we work. Luckily her Grandma is a teacher, and we can take advantage of that until school starts again.

I will be interested to see what OT says about Aly. We will be working with her closely to make sure she doesn't fall behind any farther. Luckily, our home exercises are a lot of the stuff you should be doing when you play with your baby anyway. Aly did great today, even though she was tired. She's a tough little peanut.

GO ALY!