Reminders and new approaches

It seems like every time I stop adjusting the babies’ age to account for their early birth and start thinking of them as just plain old babies (rather than as preemies), something happens to remind me that they aren’t. 

Today, Colin and Veronica’s occupational therapist (Deb) did their assessment for Early Intervention. She and I had talked some about this when Veronica had her follow-up at the NICU last month (Deb was the therapist at the clinic at that point — they rotate through), and I knew that in fine motor skills, Veronica is ahead. I also knew, from watching him, that Colin has very good fine motor skills as well.

Deb’s official assessment (according to John, who was here for it) agreed with that — Veronica’s fine motor skills are between 13 and 15 months and Colin’s are between 13 and 14 months. But Deb did say a couple of things that kind of threw me (although they didn’t surprise me).

Veronica is behind in measures of movement — standing, cruising, being willing to take steps; she’s where she should be for her adjusted age. So there we go again — adjusted age. I had finally stopped thinking of Veronica in terms of dual ages. She was just my almost year-old baby. And now I’m adjusting her age again.

Okay, so to be perfectly honest with myself, I already knew she was behind her actual age in these things. And I’m not worried about it — she is starting to stand up and is beginning to show a willingness to take steps while we’re holding her. It was just hard to be jerked back to the whole “preemie with an adjusted age and an actual age” way of thinking. 

Colin, too, is behind on his movement. No surprise there, since he’s still not sitting on his own (which is more like a six month skill). John and I were hoping he would sit by his first birthday, but that clearly isn’t going to happen (we’ve only got five days) and we’re okay with that. We’ll just have to wait a little longer.

When Deb was asking John if we had any concerns, he explained that we’re not really worried about Colin because he continues to make progress, albeit slowly, and he seems like he isn’t completely skipping any milestones. He’s just getting there on his own pace. She agreed, and then told John (reassuringly) that there is a saying that if they’re sitting by 2, they will walk.

And that was another painful reminder — of the risks Colin still faces as a result of the circumstances of his birth. We have known from the start that Colin faces a huge risk for cerebral palsy and developmental delays and problems. And that he might never walk. His list of risk factors is daunting (very premature birth, extreme low birth weight, bronchio-pulmonary displasia from the ventilator, steroids to get him off the ventilator, long time on oxygen). The fact that he shows so few problems is something we celebrate every day.

But somehow I have never really thought about the fact that he might not ever walk in concrete terms. Until today. Being told that he likely won’t face that hurdle brought home the fact that he does. (My twisted mind, right?) And it made me a little sad. 

But then Colin smiled at me and Veronica crawled over and gave me a hug, and all seemed good again. 

For 15 minutes. Then, while I was cooking dinner, both babies fell apart and started fussing nonstop. Which brings us to our new approach — to bedtime.

Neither Colin nor Veronica are good sleepers. They both still wake up (multiple times) at night wanting/needing to eat. They aren’t good at putting themselves back down, and they take micro naps. We’ve tried a variety of approaches (Veronica will cry for at least 2.5 hours if you try to let her cry it out), but nothing works really well. 

So tonight, spontaneously, John and I decided we would start putting the twins down before we eat dinner — starting now. It didn’t go very smoothly. Lack of planning will do that to you. But it was nice to be able to go out with Ethan after dinner for a bike ride, because the babies were already in bed. 

I hope (more than you can imagine) that after a few days, Colin and Veronica will adjust to this new schedule and will start sleeping better. We all need that.