Friday, October 24, 2008

Settling Back In

Monday started off as a slow day, I had a lot of unpacking to do, and it had not really sunk in that I was now unemployed. I was actually very productive, unpacking almost all of our stuff, and I had an appointment with Comcast to switch to cable modem and digital phone from DSL and Landline, also I called the insurance company to find out about the repairs, which was a challenge and took a bit of coaxing, and played phone tag with Holly’s therapists trying to schedule her 6 months assessment, it was a super busy day. In the afternoon I decided to give her some sweet potatoes, she loved these, in fact she liked them so much that she ate ¾ of the container, I didn’t want to over do it so I stopped her.

Holly was sort of happy to be home but also sort of not, the house was really quiet, she had been used to there being like several people around at every moment and getting constant attention. I played some music to keep the house noisy, but she was very clingy and cranky all day, and exhibited a little bit of stranger anxiety when Katie came. Katie had her report with her that I was able to review, it was a draft, and for the most part she has her assessed on the 5.5 month level, this was based on assessments she did about 3 weeks ago when she was 6 months old, almost 7, so she is coming up about 6 weeks delayed. I was happy with the report and the progress she has been making, she has several skills that are in the 8-10 month range, but the cluster of skills is around 5 months, she has a few only at the 3-4 month level too. Yet the main thing is that every day she learns something new, and I see her moving forward every day. Since Holly has been so fussy and she seemed to be at the edge of being sick, we decided to keep her in the co-sleeper most of the week, laying her in bed next to us, so we could keep a close eye on her.

On Tuesday we got a package from my friend Ona in England, she got Holly the cutest items, a pair of bear slippers, and some pink knitted shoes, and finally a pair of lacey socks and patent leather black shoes. The first two par are still too big on her, but the black shoes were just her size, and were a perfect match with her little school girl outfit pictured here, but they didn’t seem to stay on her feet for too long.

Tuesday was a low key day catching up on all of the housework and settling back in from vacation; it still has not sunk in that I don’t have to work anymore. I spent the afternoon going through a week’s worth of mail, doing some bills, and other paperwork that I had to get done. In the afternoon I fed Holly, and since she liked the Sweet Potatoes so much, I mixed them with some rice cereal to get her to eat that, she eat it up, though clever at trying to keep her mouth closed, she was happy to eat it and you could tell she liked the flavor.

On Wednesday morning I was off to get a cleaning at the dentist’s office early in the morning and to pick up a prescription from Children’s Hospital. It was for Liquid Folic Acid, this high foliate treatment is something that Dr. Hagerman recommends and writes about in her book. The dosage is really high compared to what people are used to giving, and it doesn’t come typically in a liquid for, you have to get it in IV vials for it to be liquid, so when I picked it up I had to also get 30 syringes, as you need to use a needle to get it out of the vial and then inject it into the milk, which needs to be at least 50cc’s. It is weird how you use the needles, you have to inject in the amount of air equal to the amount of liquid you are removing, and it’s weird. I filled the prescription but we haven’t started giving it to her yet. We plan to start this weekend, so we have some time to play with it, give her a small dose and work our way up.

2 comments:

ST said...

We just started Quinn on folic acid, also prescribed by Randi Hagerman at the MIND. We're not sure if we notice a difference - it's only been about 4 days. And it sounds like our formulation is a bit different than yours. We filled the prescription at Elephant Pharmacy, and it's basically a pretty normal, if gooey liquid, like baby tylenol in consistency. We use a baby medicine dropper/syringe and just give it directly, the same way we give other medications. Maybe that's because Quinn's older?

CarolineThomas said...

Aww I thought I recognised those shoes, I am so happy they go with her outfit. I purposely made sure the other stuff was big because I was worried it would be too small, lol.
I thought you might be able to look at the slippers and maybe come up with a pattern of your own so you can make Holly a new pair every time she grows out of them?