October

Golly, October sure has been a very busy month for Tripp. 

The latest is that Tripps hearing aids should be in next week! It will be so exciting to see how he responds once he can actually hear!

ST and PT are being increased both being increased to once a week for Speech and every other week for Physical Therapy.  Speech is being increased because now we also need to work on language/hearing skills along with eating skills.  And physical therapy is being increased because while he is not really behind we dont want him getting behind.  Tripp still has alot of work to do with head control as he is still not lifting his head up for extended periods of time. 

We also went to Wake Forest 2 weeks ago and met with a pulmonologist there who is scheduling a sleep study.  They said to call tomorrow if we havent heard of an appointment for it yet, which we havent so Ill be calling tomorrow about that. This same week we also met with his plastic surgeon, he is wanting to push back his cleft surgery for sure until a year old, because this will only give him less room in the back of his mouth.  He is going to see how the sleep study goes and see if he grows any more in the next few months.  If he doesnt and is still having sleep apnea problems then we will see about a second jaw distraction.  He said that he hasnt ever had to do a second one, so hopefully his jaw will grow enough to avoid this and to stop the sleep apnea problem (bc sleep apnea does have some serious long term effects). 

On a good note Tripp is not aspirating any more and is doing awesome with bottle feeds.  He is consistantly eating about 1/2 of his bottle and a few times has finished all of it.  Which is awesome, our speech therapist is very impressed--she says he is blowing all of the pierre robin babies that she has seen out of the water! (Even though he still is having some sleep apnea issues, this is the wonders of the jaw distraction when compared to a trach which is what every other pierre robin baby has in this area) He is also eating about 1/3 of a container of stage 2 baby foods.