12 month NICU follow up appointment

Yesterday we had Gabriella's 12 month NICU follow-up appointment. It was a long morning but the appointment could not have gone any better. At these appointments, she gets weighed and measured, gets evaluated by a physical therapist, and then gets evaluated by one of her neonatologists. Up until age 2, CCMC uses her adjusted age to evaluate how she is doing as opposed to her actual age. Her actual age is 11 months 22 days but her adjusted age is 8 months 9 days old. They check her cognitive skills, language skills, fine motor skills and gross motor skills. We are thrilled that in all areas she is scoring in the 10-12 month zone! We are so proud of how well she is doing and simply amazed at how strong she is.

To test her cognitive skills, they drop toys on the floor and see if she looks for them, hide toys under blankets and buckets to see if she will try and figure out where they are, and place a toy out of her reach but on top of a blanket to see if she would pull the blanket towards herself to move the toy. She did all of these things which blew me away. Watching her mind work is fascinating!

For language skills, they checked to see if she turns to her name, looks at "where is mom?", and listen to her play babble to hear the range of different noises she makes. She is very observant and is often very quiet in new places but she warmed up and as she was playing she started babbling away. This is the area that she scored in the 10 month range simply because she doesn't have as many words as a full term 12 month old typically has. She has the full range of sounds they would expect but hasn't yet developed specific "words" for specific objects (ie: baba for bottle, etc.).

She got through the motor skills area with no problem at all! They gave her a variety of objects to see what she would do with them. She picked up string, dangled a toy from a piece of string, took a puff with her thumb and pointer finger and ate it, threw toys, crawled, and pulled up on larger blocks and tables.

A year ago Tuesday, I had started a vacation at work.... our plan was to get some baby furniture set up, Gianni was going to run the half marathon, and then we were going to head on a "babymoon" road trip down to Virginia. I was 25 weeks pregnant and feeling good. A year ago today, Sandy came to visit before heading up to New Hampshire for a wedding. We went to Starbucks and ran into a woman who I had babysat for when I was in high school. We talked for awhile remembering her preemie twins who are now in college. We had no idea that we would be telling a similar story just a week later...

One year ago today!!!

Gianni is running the Hartford 1/2 Marathon on Saturday morning. Seeing his bib and directions arrive in the mail flooded us with emotions. He never got to run last year because I ended up being hospitalized the night before with what was thought be kidney stones. I made him pack his running stuff to the hospital that night because I was so annoyed that I had to be admitted. I spent the night trying to convince him that he could just warm up jog down Washington Street to the starting line. He skipped the race, I was discharged on Sunday only to end up back in the hospital Monday morning. That Hartford Marathon bag stayed in our car for so long after that weekend... so seeing a new one again brought back all the crazy memories of last year.

I am already feeling overwhelmed with emotions knowing that Gabriella is turning one next week. I will be flooding this blog with photos and memories. Watching our little girl yesterday, flying through developmental tests, made my heart explode.  Last October we didn't know if she would survive. We didn't know what her quality of life would be and what her future would look like. All we knew was that she was ours and in the blink of an eye she had our whole hearts and became our whole world. And look at her now.

xo,
Mary