It's been too long!

I have definitely dropped the ball on keeping this blog updated! It's been over two months!

We had a wonderful first Thanksgiving and Christmas with McLaine. That little girl is so spoiled rotten. She now has more toys than she knows what to do with!

McLaine's biggest, newest thing is her first tooth! It just poked through this week. You can't really see it yet, but I can feel it! I can't wait to see it when it's grown in all the way. My little baby is now 10 months old and has a tooth! I can't believe it!

McLaine has now been working with her therapist for 2 months. We are still working on the big goal of her sitting on her own, and getting into crawling position, but she has acquired some great skills along the way.
McLaine can now:
*roll both ways and all over the place
*scoot herself alllllll around her play area using her legs and head lol
*stand in her exersaucer and play for as long as she wants without losing head control or slumping
*she's gained great hand control and can pick up and play with all kinds of things! She can hold a toy in each hand (which is actually a big deal believe it or not lol)
*grab her feet and put them in her mouth lol
*repeat sounds and blow raspberries (still working on babbling with consonants)
*reach for mommy's nose and eyes when asked to identify them!

It's incredible how active and verbal she's gotten lately. We still don't have any kind of formal diagnosis. Her pediatrician is leaning toward the idea of a muscle disorder and wants us to try and get a muscle biopsy (removing a small piece of muscle and looking at it on the microscopic level). I'm just trying to appreciate every day and not focus on the "hunt for a diagnosis" that we may never actually get. Then there's still the chance that it's nothing at all and she's just a little behind. Who knows? We're taking it a day at a time. :)

Some Surprise Good News

We met with McLaine's Early Interventionist yesterday. She is a nurse with a specialty degree in child development. We were talking and filling out paperwork when she mentioned something about coming once a week. I thought she must be mixed up because she told me she had originally receieved another child's paperwork by mistake. I asked and she said "no, that's correct." So, the Early Steps program has decided to give McLaine therapy with the interventionist for one hour weekly! WOW the power of prayer! I pray every night that God would help McLaine to be the strongest and healthiest she can be and to help us find the tools to give her every opportunity. My prayers are answered totally unexpectedly :) We would not have been able to afford weekly physical therapy out of pocket so this is such a blessing! So, we set up some goals for the next 6 months.
In 6 months McLaine will:
*Sit with assistance (whether it's a boppy or just her hands) for 1 minute
*Use 2 fingers to grasp small objects (pincer grip, picking up things like puffs or cheerios off of the high chair tray etc)
*Babble with alternating sounds (aaa-oo-aaa-oo or ba ba ba ba)

I'm feeling really excited and hopeful :)

Miss Chiquita McLaine was a second place winner in our town's costume contest. Here's a couple pics:



I made her the little fruit basket and she just looked like a little Arabian princess or something in it. She was adorable!

On a sadder note, I saw this on my homepage today:
http://http://www.aolhealth.com/health/fall-health/flu-shot-desiree-jennings?icid=mainaimdl3link2http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aolhealth.com%2Fhealth%2Ffall-health%2Fflu-shot-desiree-jennings
Being a parent is just so scary! McLaine already has had her first dose of the seasonal flu vaccine because she is one of those respiratory at risk children. She could die from the flu, but at the same time the vaccines are so scary in what you may be putting in your child's body and you don't even know. For now she has had all her advised vaccines. However, we are going with a delayed schedule for the rest of her vaccines. She will still receive all her vaccines by the time she is 5, just not on the advised schedule. I'd prefer her to get 1 vaccine every few months instead of loading her down with several in one visit. I also don't know how I feel about her getting flu vaccines after this year if she is no longer a respiratory risk. It's not because of this particular video. I just happened to see it and it just brings to light a lot of the risk involved. Anyway, I'm rambling. I just really feel for this girl.

On a happier note, we are picking up McLaine's pics from last week at JC Penney's. They are so adorable and I am so excited to see the prints!

Updates

So, I'm just getting around to updating from McLaine's Early Steps evaluation last week. Things went both good and bad. The good news is McLaine tested low average in 2 categories and completely average in 3 categories. This means she's not severe enough to be called clinically delayed by their standards. The bad news is because she's not testing out as delayed, she does not qualify for any services. The speech therapist did say that McLaine should be babbling with consonant sounds by now (she currently only makes vowel sounds). She says she can see McLaine's mouth moving with purpose, but that her tongue doesn't follow suit. The tongue is, of course, a muscle, so with low muscle tone she is having problems getting it to do what she wants. The evaluator did do us a favor and tweak her score a bit so there was a 3 point difference between her receptive and communicative language skills. This qualified her to have an evaluator/therapist come to the house once a month and sort of "check on her" so that she can stay in the program. This way if she does start to fall more behind in anything, they can catch it early and get her the help she needs. The evaluator/therapist may also work with her a bit or give us some activities that we can do with her ourselves. The evaluator did say he thought McLaine could definitely benefit from physical therapy (her weakest area was gross motor) if we could afford to do it out of pocket. I'm going to look into it for sure, so I suppose we'll find out if it's do-able for us. We can also submit her to be re-evaluated again in 3 months which I will definitely be doing.



I took these pictures of McLaine a couple weeks ago in her "baby armchair." She looked like a little old man from the back and I just thought the back of her head looked so cute :)





Halloween is coming up this week and I am so excited! I'd like to say McLaine is excited but I doubt she knows it's Halloween lol :) Many Halloween pics to come I'm sure!

Dearest Tooth

Dear tiny tooth,

As of right now, you are ruining McLaine's 7 month old life. McLaine is normally a very peaceful baby, but you have disturbed her whole routine. She would like to drink a bottle, eat some sweet potatoes and sleep in peace once again! (I wouldn't mind sleeping in peace either) So please, tiny tooth, come in soon. We await your appearance with bated breath.

Sincerely,
McLaine's Mommy

Awesome Day!

McLaine rolled over today!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Last night she was trying really hard to do it, but just couldn't quite get it. This morning, I put her on her back on her playmat and watched her for a second and she just laid there. So, I went in the kitchen to get her medicine, came back and she was on her tummy!!!!! I gave her her medicine, put her back onto her back, and watched her for another minute or so and she just laid there. So, I went into the restroom. When I came out, not only was she on her tummy, but she was about a foot off of her playmat on the carpet! She's my little mobile boog now! Now, if she'll just do it for mommy while I'm watching lol

I also called up her genetics doctor today. Her metabolic testing all came back normal! YAY! Still waiting for the chromosomal microarray panel.

So many wonderful things to be thankful for today!

GI Visit

Today we went to McLaine's new GI doctor. I couldn't stand the old one. I felt like he didn't listen and he was also unreliable. That can be very annoying when you have as many doctor visits as McLaine does. It's very important that our doctors be pretty on schedule and don't cancel us so that we can make our other appointments. So, we only ended up seeing her old GI one time. He was an hour and a half late. For her follow up, they called the day before to see if we'd change our appointment time. We couldn't and the next morning (the day of the appointment) they called and cancelled on us saying the doctor was "ill." So needless to say, I no longer wanted to go to him.

The new GI we went to today was awesome! He was very nice and I didn't feel rushed despite the fact that he had just taken over this practice 2 days ago and had a waiting room full of people! I spoke to him about wanting to try McLaine on Erythromycin. He said that that was exactly what he had wanted to reccommend to me and thought it was a great idea. Erythromycin is an antibiotic that acts as a motility drug. Basically it will help her digestive muscles work more efficiently, thereby helping her reflux and constipation. Hopefully this will work so that McLaine can get more exercise time without throwing up her food! (Right now she has to spend most of her time on an incline or being held so that she keeps her food down! She's also been rejecting her bottle and sometimes even her solid food this week. I'm on the fence on whether it's teething or a reflux flare up. Fingers crossed!

Starting Out

I thought this would be a great way to keep everyone up to date on McLaine. As most of you probably already know, McLaine was diagnosed with hypotonia (low muscle tone) when she was 4 months old. We are now facing and working on conquering her developmental delays. People always tell me she'll do everything she's supposed to "in her own time," so I thought that would be a nice name for her blog :) Many more posts to come!