"Begin today and write in it your goings and comings, your deepest thoughts, your achievements and your failures, your associations and your triumphs, your impressions and your testimonies. I promise you that if you will keep your journals and records, they will indeed be a source of great inspiration to you, each other, your children, your grand-children and others throughout the generations. Remember, the Savior chastised those who failed to record important events." --President Spencer W. Kimball

January 3, 2013

Early Intervention 2013

Early Intervention still comes twice a month to work with baby Katea.  Melinda is the name of our therapist and she's great!  She sat down with us when she first came and set some goals that we wanted baby Katea to reach within the next 9 months.  Her goals were things like hold her head up at a 90 degree angle, turn her head from side to side while laying on her stomach, reaching for toys, rolling over from front to back and back to front, sitting unassisted, pushing her upper body off the floor with her arms. The simple milestones that most babies reach on their own were put into goals that we had to work on with our little miracle.  She came and set these goals with us when baby Katea first got released from the hospital....that was back in February 2012, and we were SO SO SO happy and proud to see that she passed off every single goal we had set for her....and more!  :)

Melinda always gets on the floor and plays with her


At our last EI appointment, Melinda marked off all the goals as completed (there were 9 total) and we set some new goals that we would like to see her reach within the next 9 months.  The goals we set this time were things like start to crawl, start to mimick sounds and actions, go from sitting to crawling and visa versa from both the left and right, recognize that da-da is Ova and ma-ma is me, pull herself up to stand, start to walk, eat more solids, gain weight, etc.  That sounds like a whole lot of goals to set for her, but just within a month and a little of actually setting them, she's already completeing them! 

She's been rolling herself around the room for a while, and then that turned into army crawling.  Just a few days ago she lifted herself up on her knees and started crawling on all fours.  She was a little wobbly at first and she'd lose her balance and fall on her stomach, but within a weeks time she's a pro and she is all over the place all the time....it's actually hard to keep up with her LOL :)  She talks a lot and says a lot of different sounds....and we're trying to see if she associates the sounds with anything, and for now we think they're just sounds.  In the morning when she's awake she'll slap Ova and say dada over and over again, but that's really the only time she calls him that.  We've been working on making sure that whenever she's with Ova we say da-da and with me ma-ma, so she'll catch on soon enough!  For now, we're so proud of all the different sounds she's making!  She can go from sitting to crawling from both sides and from crawling to sitting too.  And just recently, within the past couple days she started pulling herself up to stand.  I almost cried the first time she did it, I was so proud!  :)  I was sitting on the couch and she was crawling all over the place, and she crawled over to me and pulled herself up.  I, of course, celebrated a little loudly so she got excited and ended up falling down....but that was the first time she'd ever done that and she continued to do it all day long.  Now she pulls herself up on anything that she can.  She even stands up holding on with only one hand....she hasn't talken any steps yet, but with the amazing progress she's been making, I'm sure that will happen in no time!  :)  Super proud mama!

One thing that she has been struggling with is her weight.  You can kind of see how skinny she is in the picutres above, but she's really skinny!  She still fits into size 6-9 month clothing and she's almost 16 months old.  Melinda asked us a bunch of questions about what she eats during the day so she could calculate how many calories she is actually taking in....and then she was going to figure out how much she should be eating to maintain her weight and how many she needs to be eating to gain weight.  I really don't know what's going on with her, she just is never hungry and she doesn't care to eat.  She usually only cries for a bottle when she's tired.  She'll put stuff in her mouth and chew it up and spit it out, and if I give her baby food or mashed up food, she'll only take a couple bites and then clinch her mouth shut really tight and turn her head away indicating to me that she doesn't want any more.  I've tried changing the food up and trying different flavors to see if I could find something she likes, and haven't been successful.  When she was on the Neosure, she was a chubby baby....but now she's just so boney.  I took her to get her first synagis shot in the beginning of December and she weighed 18.5 lbs.....when I took her in for her second synagis shot of the season at the beginning of January, she'd lost a few ounces.  Not good.  Melinda put all the information together and she told us that baby Katea needs to be eating at least 900 calories per day to maintain weight....so she'd need to eat more than that for her to gain.  Adding up what she eats on a daily basis, it only equals 620 calories...give or take.  No wonder she's losing weight.  I was at a standstill because I don't know what she needs or wants...she just has no interest in eating.  She's a happy baby, and she's meeting her milestones that we're setting for her....she's just not eating as much as she should.  She's probably the first Fangupo ever that doesn't like to eat LOL.  Melinda suggested that I schedule an appointment with my pediatrician to see what other methods we can try....and she also referred us to the feeding clinic.  That was our next step.

I called the Feeding clinic to set up an appointment, but they only hold classes on random occasions and there's a waiting list to be seen.  I put her name on there and was told I would get a call when they schedule another class, which she thought would be sometime in March or April :(

I took her in to see Dr. Templeman and he prescribed her pediasure.  It's like a milkshake you can buy at any food store and it's clinically proven to help weight gain.  I went straight to the store and bought some and we've been mixing 4oz. of whole milk and 4oz. of pediasure with every single bottle.  We just started this so we haven't really noticed any difference yet, but hopefully soon we'll start to see her fatten up!  :)  And of course, we're still trying to feed her solids!  We found out that she LOVES apples....but not applesauce....and she doesn't like the apples cut up.  She likes us to give her the whole apple and she will nibble on it.  She somehow bites the apple and eats all the meat off the skin and she spits the skin out.  LOL.  She was goin to town on an apple the other day and when she was done, we picked her up and there were apple skins all over the place. LOL
 
Well my little miracle, I love you and I'm so proud of you!  Please eat....food is GOOD!!

1 comment:

sarah said...

EI is such a great program, and for her to have accomplished all 9 of her goals is awesome!!! Way to go, Katea! I'm the same way when my son who works with EI does something new, I freak out and celebrate. Lol it's just so nice to watch them progress, you know? :) I hope she starts gaining weight. My one year old struggles with weight gain too, and it's no fun. Good luck!