Recovery and Progress



About 10 days or so ago, Early Intervention came out to do their assessment of Hannah.  Though they didn’t use the same test that our service coordinator used in Texas, it was similar and showed the same results.  Hannah’s skills are still “scattered,” and she ‘rates’ between 8 months to 12 months old in all areas…physical development, adaptive behavior, cognition, communication, and heck, I forgot the last one.

But Hannah has progressed so dang much since she was released from the hospital the first time just 1-1/2 months ago.  She went from a baby who had no control over any of her movements, no strength, and could barely hold a pacifier in her mouth to a child who today is crawling all over the place, sitting up and playing, and eating baby food by spoon without any problems.  She still has some movements in her hands and arms, but that does not stop her from doing whatever she wants to do.

I can barely contain the smile on my face and the excitement in my heart every time we go to private therapy (3 times a week – OT, speech, and PT) and her therapist says “I can’t believe how much she has progressed in just 1 week!”

Even my mom, who has not seen Hannah in 3 weeks, saw her today (as she was picking Ethan and Abigail up to take them to Cali for the week) and noticed how much better Hannah is.  Not only does she look fuller because she has gained some weight and doesn’t look at skinny, but Hannah is doing so much more than when she last saw her.   Three weeks ago, my mom said she wasn’t crawling, and she wasn’t even trying to sit up by herself.

Now, Hannah is all over the place.  She has even gotten herself back to the point where she will crawl over to the couch and get up on her knees.  She tries to get her foot under to get to a stand, but she is just not there yet.  But I know that in just a few weeks or so, she will regain that strength too and will be cruising all over the place again.  My hope is that she can even start using her gait trainer in a month or so (her PT thinks it may even be sooner!).

What Hannah has pulled off after being in the hospital for 6+ weeks (28 days in the PICU) and was at the point where I feared for days that I would lose her  because she was so sick…to what she has done in just the 6+ weeks since being let out of the hospital.   Seriously, I don’t know if I could work at recovery as fast as she has — and she wants to, which I know is the key!

She wants to do so much, she pushes herself.   She does not like the trach and has pulled it out half-way twice, pulled out her g-tube mic-key button once, and she takes off her HME (the cover of the trach) at least 25 to 50 times a day.

She is AMAZING.

I took these pics of her today.  She was just sitting on one of her chairs with her toy desk, and she was just having a great time.